


Directionally Challenged

by Bibliotecaria_D



Category: Brave Police J-Decker
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-17
Updated: 2016-04-17
Packaged: 2017-11-10 04:00:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 30,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/461982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bibliotecaria_D/pseuds/Bibliotecaria_D
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherein the Brave Police blunder around and through a series of prompts that don’t seem to come with a map attached.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pt. 1

**Title:** Directionally Challenged, Pt. 1  
 **Warnings:** Random prompts create random ficlets.  
 **Rating:** PG  
 **Continuity:** Brave Police J-Decker  
 **Characters:** All of ‘em  
 **Disclaimer:** The theatre doesn’t own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.  
 **Motivation (Prompt):** An open post where I asked for people to please drop prompts for me, and I attempted to write them as fast they appeared. This is something I intend to continue with the Brave Police, as tiny cute ficlets are so easy and fun!

 

**[* * * * *]**  
 _Drillboy - first thunderstorm_  
 **[* * * * *]**

Power Joe had powered down for the night alone, just like normal. The BP units didn't even need technicians for this anymore: hook up four power cables, two data input/output cables, and the monitor link-in to the other units at their recharge stations. The rig-arms kept the cables at the right height. They just had to position their backs against the repair cradles’ support bars and reach behind themselves to make the actual connections. Easy as driving.

McCrane still did the connections for Drill Boy, but that was because keeping Drill Boy from wriggling free required Dumpson to hold him in place until the recharge protocols kicked in. The brat had a surfeit of energy and the attention span of a _ooo shiny!_ Telling him to keep still only kept movement at the forefront of his spastic thoughts. Fortunately, some Chief Engineer by the surname of Toudou had come prepared for sentient robots with an inability to sleep on command. Apparently, his brother’s children had a similar problem, and he hadn’t wanted to have to stay up half the night in the maintenance bay coaxing reluctant mecha to sleep. 

The similarities between growing children and the BP units was sometimes eerie. Saejima had suggested bedtime stories before Toudou came up with this idea, which had brought about two men leaning back in their chairs enjoying a drink and speculating on what would be a good bedtime story for five meter tall manmade robots. They decided on classic mystery stories for children, or possibly police files for unsolved crimes. None of the mecha ever questioned why translated copies of _’The Nancy Drew Mysteries’_ and _’The Encyclopedia Brown Series’_ showed up on a shelf outside the Chief’s office door, but everybody knew where the entire Sherlock Holmes series migrated to the day after the series first appeared. McCrane only gave the books up under duress, and only if a mecha swore on his paintjob that he’d return them in the same condition they were loaned out in.

Anyway, the nice thing about being hooked into the computers for the night was the external protocol transmission. Otherwise Power Joe was absolutely sure McCrane would stay up all night worrying about philosophical ideas, Dumpson would wake them all up with those weird dreams about Miss Ayako he had that sent his engine revving hot, and Drill Boy would just never shut down. Ever. 

Especially not tonight, with the wild lightening show and thunder _boom_ ing afterward. It actually hadn’t occurred to any of the Build Team to watch the weather forecast out of anything but routine, but Yuuta had recognized the implications of an incoming thunderstorm. Having gone through this three time before, their Boss had wised up to the way of new-built mecha with human hearts. Namely that they thought they were prepared to face their first large weather event -- but inevitably ended up outside his window at all hours, optics huge and overly-bright as they hesitantly tapped on the glass and asked if lightning really would zap their Super A.I. to cinders. 

Deckerd, at least, had the excuse of simply being new. The Build Team had been too dang proud to ask their more experienced leader about it. Shadowmaru was never going to live it down, but he’d been outside Yuuta’s window, too. The ninja had been fine right up until Vice-Commissioner Azuma off-handedly mentioned how the military typically didn’t bother repairing jets that were hit by lightening, on or off the airfield. Turned out that Azuma had just been trolling Shadowmaru in petty revenge for taking his parking spot the week before, but that hadn’t kept the Ninja Detective from suffering a minor panic attack when the thunder started rolling. 

None of the Brave Police were vulnerable to lightening strikes, no matter the anxiety and pain a direct hit caused. Yuuta had patiently explained that to them, just as Chief Toudou had explained it to him during a tearful 3 AM phone call when Deckerd had first asked the question. He hadn’t thought Shadowmaru needed ‘The Talk,’ or he’d have done it _before_ the shaken purple mecha appeared out of nowhere to wake him up at midnight and lose 50+ Ninja Cool Points by admitting the Vice-Commissioner had thoroughly freaked him out. 

Once Yuuta spotted the incoming weather and reminded them of their embarrassing first storm experiences, McCrane had taken it upon himself to give ‘The Talk’ this time. Commissioner Saejima had choked on thin air and given them an astonished look after overhearing that, strangely. He’d recovered quickly, of course, and complimented them on their maturity. He’d given the Boss a weird look, though, when McCrane credited the boy with the idea.

Drill Boy, oddly enough, had sat completely still the whole time, green optics big and intent. Getting struck by lightning wasn’t something that would have entered his head, probably, but none of them were taking the risk of a drill-tank bursting out of the street in front of the Tomonaga residence because the youngest BP unit didn’t think about it until the _boom_ s started. Dumpson had been sure to hook the brat around the neck and tussle with him as the rain started to fall after dark, trying to distract him. The combination of logical explanation and distraction seemed to have worked.

Or so they’d thought until they got off shift and headed to the maintenance bay to recharge. Dumpson had towed Drill Boy outside to take the long way around the building and let him play in the puddles, but that backfired spectacularly. Drill Boy’s wailing preceded his running entrance into the maintenance bay, with Dumpson yelling as he tried to keep up with the one-mecha stampede. It’d taken all three of the elder Build Team members plus Shadowmaru as backup to convince Drill Boy that the sky wasn’t out to kill him.

Okay, so Power Joe might have casually terrified the brat before McCrane got to him. It was amazing what excess electricity would do to their systems, really, and the risk of giant metal objects getting hit by lightening _was_ pretty high. As Drill Boy hyperventilated despite Shadowmaru running through a ventilation exercise with him, Power Joe got the feeling that, uh, maybe he shouldn’t have thrown those kind of facts at the gullible newbie. 

Still, he refused to feel bad -- alright, _too_ bad -- about it, because a scaredy-cat Drill Boy was a Drill Boy who submitted meekly to being tucked into his recharge station for once. It took nearly half of a _’Boxcar Children’_ book as read by Power Joe and McCrane, a canister of jet fuel split halvesies with Shadowmaru, and Dumpson calling Miss Ayako for an update on just what kind of danger she was putting herself into this week in the name of researching a new story, but the littlest BP unit’s systems finally calmed down into acceptable hook-up parameters. 

Sheesh. All this because Drill Boy was afraid to go outside into a thunderstorm. None of the others remembered being _that_ scared of weather. 

…Power Joe was having some trouble with that ‘not feeling bad’ thing. 

The kid still had a fearful expression plastered over his face, even after the recharge protocols kicked in and made him doze off. Power Joe had delayed the protocols himself until he was sure the youngest Build Team member had fallen fast asleep.

Which was why he was so confused when he woke up the next morning with Drill Boy snuggled close, cabling stretched across the room and face a picture of peace as he slept blissfully, wrapped up safe and secure in Power Joe’s arms.

 

**[* * * * *]**  
 _Shadowmaru and Power Joe - martial arts movie marathon_  
 **[* * * * *]**

"Jackie Chan."

He typed intently. "Of _course_. Do I look a fool, Master Power Joe? Jackie Chan is a given." Because he really was. If Power Joe hadn’t put the man’s movies on the list, Shadowmaru would have. There were classics, and then there were _classics._

The power shovel bent over his shoulder and looked at the list. "Bite me, mutt. Oo, _007_ movies? Didn't you know you liked James Bond, too." He glanced up, looking at the empty desk where their resident British git usually resided. Shadowmaru snuck the fourteen _’Mission Impossible’_ movies into the list while he was distracted and scrolled up so they’d hide among the already-approved movies. The ninja had a thing for the theme song, okay? It ran fairly continuously through his head during missions involving stealth. "Think Duke likes James Bond?" Power Joe asked, oblivious to the sneaking.

"I think _I_ like them," Shadowmaru said dismissively. "Sir Knight would hardly want to sit through a movie marathon with us. Ah, I'll take that one, thank you kindly."

" _'Kill Bill'_?" Power Joe read off the screen. "Should I know that one?"

"Hmm, maybe. We'll see what your tolerance for gore is, my friend." Oops, now the power shovel wouldn't back down even if he had to hide under his desk afterward. Shadowmaru knew that mulish look. He added another movie to the queue to counteract the gore. Hopefully, that’d let the Build Team sleep sometime in the near future instead of coming online at all hours trying to calm one of their team members. McCrane would have his wings for bookends if Power Joe had nightmares about blood-covered women in wedding gowns, because the crane mecha wasn’t nearly as covert about planning that hypothetical wedding as he thought he was. Although the idea of Colonel Seia in a white dress sending a giant robot into a panic attack was rather funny. 

Power Joe continued to read over Shadowmaru’s shoulder, innocently ignorant of the ninja’s amused -- if somewhat apprehensive -- thoughts. " _'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'_? That seems...odd." Childish, he meant, but if the ninja was going to slide that one in, then he knew what movie he wanted. " _'Kung Fu Panda,'_ " he demanded.

Shadowmaru added it without quibble, because, well, yeah. Giant panda plus martial arts? What wasn’t to love? "We don't tell McCrane," he warned, because otherwise they’d have the crane sitting in on their movie marathon, and then they’d never even get through the opening credits of _’Kill Bill.’_ McCrane was positively precognitive when it came to protecting his team from trauma.

"Agreed.”

The ninja clicked over to a new screen, and the two BP units breathed in awed unison, "Chuck Norris."

There were classics, and then there was _legend._

 

 **[* * * * *]**  
 _Duke and Gunmax - teaching_ proper _English_  
 **[* * * * *]**

Duke had been brought online with perfect English downloads. He also had Japanese language files. He spoke both languages equally well, as he should, although he politely refrained from mixing his language usage. Regina herself spoke four languages fluently, and she’d sternly lectured him on avoiding the social blunder of using words the Japanese wouldn’t readily understand.

So it bothered him immensely for two weeks that Gunmax spewed both languages. Worse, the cheeky bastard didn’t even do it _right._ He used the correct words, true, but he mangled English into Engrish every single time. Hearing the ‘l’ sound get transformed into an ‘r’ was enough to make Duke’s language files try and crawl out of his processors. Gunmax spoke Japanese and English like a mad chef throwing words into a blender without a lid. Vowels and consonants slurred every which way at random. 

Duke couldn't understand how a robot with a functioning computer could speak a language so badly. It was just vocabulary plus grammar and pronunciation data, after all. The Motorcycle Detective seemed to have a good grasp on the meaning of the words he used; his understanding for reading and writing rated far above his oral capabilities. Even his listening abilities were above his speaking, however, and that was the baffling part. Duke knew Gunmax could understand spoken English, which implied that he’d heard properly pronounced English before. He could read and, er, generally spell the words correctly. He could understand them when Duke said them aloud. He just completely failed when saying them himself.

That didn’t sound like data file error. That sounded intentional, and deliberately antagonizing _”that British ‘bot”_ by mispronouncing English fit Gunmax’s jerk personality like a glove.

Anger over the perceived slight built and built until finally, after two long Engrish-filled weeks, the Knight Detective lost his temper. He snapped at the green mecha in English, “ **Cease your disrespect! If you think your beastly usage is somehow a cute accent, you are sadly mistaken, and I will not tolerate your flagrant misusage of my native tongue any longer. Either quit your pathetic attempt at humor and correct your words, or stop using them altogether!** ”

The rest of the Decker Room stopped what they were doing and stared. Even Gunmax’s notoriously irrepressible badass image took a short vacation as he gaped. 

Duke just stood there, optics narrowed imposingly and arms folded over his hood. Shadowmaru seemed faintly puzzled as the ninja’s Super A.I. obviously tried to translate the foreign words, but the Build Team just as obviously didn’t have the first idea of where to even begin. Drill Boy didn’t so much as blinked as his soccer ball bounced off his head and rolled away. Power Joe slowly reached out and muted his soap operas. Deckerd looked between his new lieutenant and old partner with a concerned frown as Gunmax’s gape turned quickly to sputtering, then a furious expression of outright anger.

“ **Just where do you get off --** ” the green mecha started in a bare hiss, and ugh, the words were almost unintelligible. The Engrish was even _worse_ when the cad was upset, apparently.

“ **Stop this insolence immediately, or I will cite you for disrespect and put you on report,** ” Duke interrupted coldly. There was something deliciously right about putting the fool in his place using English instead of Japanese. He’d missed speaking it, to be honest, and his righteous anger over the disrespect shown to both himself and his Lady boiled over in his words. “ **Provoking a superior officer may have passed as acceptable behavior in the past, but I am not Deckerd.** ” The Brave Police’s leader jumped in his seat, recognizing the English pronunciation of his name. He seemed very worried and about to intervene, which was nonsense. Duke didn’t need to borrow Deckerd’s authority to put down Gunmax’s adolescent stunt. “ **I have reached my tolerance level for your rude behavior. Mocking me carries consequences, and I will not hesitate to pull you up short using whatever means I find necessary if you do not curb your tongue!** ”

Gunmax’s head jerked back as if the Knight had slapped him. He opened his mouth and shut it. Opened it. 

Duke waited. One more push, Gunmax. He just needed one more stupidly persistent bit of Engrish to file a complaint. 

The other BP unit seemed to realize that fact, too, or maybe he realized he was far too furious to say anything that wasn’t going to be an intentional insult he really would get in trouble for. But where-as Deckerd tended to punch first when his temper went off, Gunmax’s first instinct was to storm away in huff. The green mecha shut his mouth with an audible _click_ , and his lips set in a grim scowl before he pivoted on one heel and stalked stiffly from the Decker Room.

Duke watched him go and sniffed disdainfully. That had gone well.

“Sir Knight,” Shadowmaru started slowly, optics wide and hands up in a placating gesture, “is there, perhaps…a problem?” Whatever else the ninja was, a translator he was not. He’d gotten about one in ten of the English words said, and that was putting him ahead of the rest of the team. 

“Not anymore,” the British mecha said with great satisfaction.

Except that it _had_ been a problem. He’d been expecting a few days of pissy-but-cowed Gunmax, perhaps another small tiff to test Duke’s resolve, but then he’d genuinely expected the Highway Patrolman to man up and get over it. They had the potential to work well together, if only the green mecha would suck it up and start acting like a gentleman instead of a complete misbegotten bastard. Gunmax was more of a hotshot cowboy than anything else, and American cowboys had a code of honor Duke could respect. So once Gunmax got over being called out on his poor manners, Duke had expected him to drop into place on the team quite well.

Instead, he’d gotten an enraged and offended mecha on his hands. A ridiculously independent one, at that. Duke hadn’t been quite clear on what Gunmax’s actual role was in the department, but it evidently didn’t require the green mecha to return to Police HeadQuarters every day. Or even every other day. From way Deckerd grew more anxious by the hour, this wasn’t normal behavior even for what Power Joe jokingly called Max-fits. 

By the fourth day, Drill Boy was forlornly piling his soccer balls on Gunmax’s abandoned desk as if he were trying to get yelled at. Yuuta asked after the missing BP unit but seemed to accept the non-answer Deckerd hedged around. Power Joe and Dumpson gave Duke a wide berth, but that wasn’t anything new. McCrane and Shadowmaru had their heads together, however, giving Duke scrutinizing looks he pretended not to notice. Later on, Deckerd called in to say he was going to do a patrol route with Gunmax instead of taking his off-shift. That implied that Gunmax _was_ still working; he just wasn’t returning to the Decker Room between shifts.

Duke didn't get it. If anyone should have been holding a grudge, it was him, not Gunmax! 

Unless…it was barely possible that the horrid Engrish could have been a real thing, not mockery. But that didn’t make sense. Not really, but…still. Just in case?

"Lady, perhaps you should check the Japanese Brave Police units' English language files for errors," he delicately suggested after a week of icy silence when Gunmax finally reappeared in the Decker Room for brief, hostile periods of time. It amazed Duke how effective a visor was when it came to glaring.

Not as effective as the narrow-eyed look of criticism Regina turned on him. That had him flinching in his armor. What had he done? "None of the BP units outside of Scotland Yard have English language files, Duke."

He reset his optics in surprise. "What? But, Lady -- "

Suddenly, he was forced to re-evaluate the confrontation with Gunmax from the very beginning. That cast things in a completely different light.

Not offended and angry; embarrassed and defensive. Because…oh, dear. Well, now he felt like a total arsehole.

Of course Engrish instead of English. The reason his Lady spoke Japanese instead of English here in Japan was because so few of the Japanese personnel she worked with spoke understandable English. They comprehended more than they spoke, but the English words came out sounding…almost exactly like Gunmax’s poor pronunciation, if Duke had bothered to make that connection. The idea of connecting human and robot under these circumstances simply hadn’t occurred to him. 

If Gunmax was speaking any form of English at all, it was an accomplishment in and of itself, because only the engineers knew the BP units’ capacity for internal datapak expansion. Their Super A.I. were capable of learning, but there was a vast difference between adaption and life lessons and, uh, language lessons. The Highway Patrolman was working, not out of installed language files, but from the self-written datafiles made by someone picking up a second language on his own. With the amount of poor English Duke had seen and heard so far in Japan, Gunmax actually wasn't doing too badly. Had someone been teaching him, or was he absorbing it through general exposure?

The Knight Detective had the sinking feeling he owed Gunmax a profound apology, and maybe an English lesson or two.

 

**[* * * * *]**

**[A/N:** _I realized just how much I was adding to these as I edited. Here was a good point to stop._ **]**


	2. Pt. 2

**Title:** Directionally Challenged, Pt. 2  
 **Warnings:** Random prompts create random ficlets.  
 **Rating:** PG  
 **Continuity:** Brave Police J-Decker  
 **Characters:** All of ‘em  
 **Disclaimer:** The theatre doesn’t own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.   
**Motivation (Prompt):** An open post where I asked for people to please drop prompts for me, and I attempted to write them as fast they appeared. This is something I intend to continue with the Brave Police, as tiny cute ficlets are so easy and fun!

 

**[* * * * *]**   
_Duke - "extrapolation of love"_   
**[* * * * *]**

After Regina went home to Great Britain, Duke floundered. 

Not _badly_. He could have done worse by a long shot. In terms of adjusting to Japan, he was really doing quite well. He'd gotten through the hardest initial blast of culture shock by downloading everything he could find on Japan. His Lady took him to task for having a closed mind a couple times as well, which was all the motivation he needed to try acceptance instead of rejection. _Nothing_ could motivate Duke more than the threat of the tremulous happiness in Regina closing off again, and, dear moving parts, he’d cut off whatever piece of himself disappointed her. 

After living in the country for a few weeks, she stopped giving him frowns during their drives together and instead unbent enough to give him a fond pat on the steering wheel while they talked about the mechanics of living in Japan versus Britain. Life here was different, but not necessarily in a bad way. She admitted to enjoying the food, something that he’d thought he’d never be able to share with her until he discovered that both Shadowmaru and Deckerd had taste sensors. 

That was, the BP units all had chemical receptors for analyzing air and liquid and even solid matter, but Shadowmaru and Deckerd had the prototypes for human parallels. They were the test version meant to change merely sensing chemicals into tasting or smelling them as a human would. The applications to their casework seemed interesting enough, but then he’d witnessed Deckerd carefully chewing on a tiny, human-sized portion of _katsudon_ while Chief Toudou monitored the sensor spikes and Regina peered at the readings in a display of enthusiasm Duke hadn’t seen since he himself had first combined with Fire Roader. Shadowmaru’s preference for _kitsune soba_ actually led to her engaging the Ninja Detective in long, speculative conversations about why he’d formed the preference: the chemical data, the textural feel, or that immeasurable human ‘taste’ the Chief had been trying to reach with the prototype sensor installation?

Duke had warily asked Deckerd about the experience of eating food, and the blue mecha had been almost disturbingly happy about it. Cleaning out their ‘food traps’ was a task the technicians didn’t enjoy in the least, but the slop of masticated food didn’t bother Deckerd. It was one more thing he could hold in common with humankind in general and Yuuta in particular, and he felt closer to his boy as a result. 

The Knight Detective had quietly submitted a request for beta testing to Chief Toudou after hearing that. Regina seemed to so enjoy the food the Boss’ eldest sister made. It might have been an evil emotion to desire for whatever closeness he could have with his creator, but he found that he could deny himself. If he could have a real, person-to-person conversation with her about the kinds of things they both liked, it would be worth any evil. Food was a huge common ground for humans. He wanted to share that with her. 

He guiltily decided not to tell his Lady about the test request, just in case. 

There were other things that he wished he could either ask her about or screw up the courage to bring up with the other Braves. Duke was, cautiously, coming to enjoy the differences between Japan and England, but sometimes he saw things and just didn’t _get_ them. He muddled through on his own via observation, research, and guesswork, but it wasn’t easy. 

Seeing policemen pressed, ah, rather intimately together on a scooter no longer reduced him to embarrassed sputtering, at least. Asia in general simply had different standards for just how close two men were physically allowed to be before it became uncomfortably homoerotic. Which ultimately explained a lot of what he’d originally thought to be open lewdness on the street and frank molestation in the teahouses. 

It also explained why the other BP units thought it acceptable to be so…touchy. Duke had thought he’d crawl out of his armor in shock the first time Drill Boy hugged him, much less the first time Gunmax plunked down on his desk and casually draped those long legs across the Knight’s lap. Shadowmaru had seemed so stand-offish and proper at first, only to transform to his dog form and go around the office getting scritches from everyone. Deckerd always had his hand on someone’s arm or was nudging someone with his shoulder, open and caring and invading Duke’s very strict British personal space bubble without even seeming to notice how the Knight went stiff and surprised every single time. The entire Build Team, McCrane’s dignity be damned, dissolved into wrestling matches and brotherly tussles the second they were off-shift. Or, hell, when they were on-shift, too. Heaven help a mecha who stood too close to a Power Joe-Drill Boy Super Huggle Attack Team-up, too, because it was like a martial arts embrace merged with a soccer game. Duke’s first experience with that had resulted in him fleeing back to his desk and taking shaken refuge in petting Shadowmaru.

It was like the world’s most benign assault on Duke’s very British social zoning rules. The Japanese BP units didn’t even acknowledge when he tried to hold them at an arm’s length. They cheerfully plowed through his --admittedly feeble -- defenses and dragged him out for adventures in physical proximity.

He’d thought maybe it was some sort of result of the close-knit nature of the Brave Police department, or even a reaction to Deckerd’s near-death. Then he realized the Commissioner and the Chief were far more physically interactive than their counterparts back in Great Britain ever would have been, and the police force here really did see nothing strange about piling two full-grown men onto a tiny scooter. It didn’t take much thought at all to link his innate distaste for Vice-Commissioner Azuma to his observation that the man never once stooped to putting a hand on the Boss’ shoulder or standing within arm’s reach of anyone. The more Duke adjusted to Japan, the more he thought of the correct British social spaces as cold, and the nonstop closeness of the Japanese Braves as just friendliness.

And then there was the Boss. Yuuta Tomonaga was a ballistic missile in the Japanese cultural arsenal. 

Duke really wished there was some form of download for dealing with normal human children. Well, not normal, per se. Yuuta probably didn’t qualify as normal any more than Regina did, but Yuuta had far less of a tragic past driving him. Instead of standing out as one of the most brilliant engineering minds of his generation or setting himself apart as a fanatically strict taskmaster, the little boy looked normal, acted normal, and yet was somehow…special. The Knight Detective had no way to explain the instant _need_ he’d had for Yuuta Tomonaga’s approval the moment he set optics on the boy. His need to please his new Boss and somehow mend the boy’s broken heart by replacing Deckerd had led Duke down a convoluted path of compromise between obeying his beloved Lady’s laws and learning how to bend before a heart that could encompass the world. 

Regina had been right when she’d asked Yuuta to stop crying in front of Duke, however. At the time, the onslaught of worry, concern, hate, and grief over BP-110’s presumed death and Duke’s assumption of command had nearly scrambled the Knight Detective’s Super A.I. He’d literally had no way to process the sheer difference between the emotional detachment every engineer and technician had shown him in Scotland Yard and the immediate connection that’d flooded him when he’d met Yuuta. The boy had burst into tears and pounded on his hood, and Duke had only been able to stare in dumb incomprehension. 

It only occurred to him later that part of the inter-personal problems that sprang up between him and the Japanese Braves might have come from the fact that he hadn’t even tried to comfort Yuuta. Only after observing the way the other BP units almost unconsciously centered their emotional well-being around their Boss did Duke realize the boy was the key to acceptance into the department.

So he turned to watching Yuuta. And therein started the confusion, because Yuuta was so _Yuuta_. The cultural things were just tacked on afterward, because Duke was already reeling mentally trying to deal with everything being thrown at him. It was very important that he adapted to Japan and learned to be part of the Japanese Brave Police, but for some reason, the most difficult part for the Knight was feeling out how to be part of a young boy’s life.

To be fair, it wasn’t every day that an ambulance rolled into battle and fell headlights-over-tires in love with a human.

Duke’s sole emotional connection before meeting Yuuta had been his creator. Sure, he’d had his colleagues in England, but he’d been around them for two weeks before transferring to Japan. Coming online with them had been easy; he’d known who they were, what they were like, and where they stood with him. The other Scotland Yard Brave Police had deferred to Duke, but they'd all looked to King as their leader. It'd been automatic. Regina had programmed them that way. Personal connections were discouraged, as she’d made it very plain that they might be damaged, held hostage, or even killed in the line of duty, and a perfect policeman would do his duty anyway. 

It was harder adjusting to his new colleagues. Duke had come here, clicking over to a new slot in his mental hierarchy of how the Japanese Brave Police were set up, and it was like a 180 degrees-opposite universe. 

Nobody had obeyed him, for one thing. He'd been stronger, higher ranking, and their dead leader's replacement -- and they'd completely disregarded him. Yuuta had hated him, but that at least could be explained as human weakness. He hadn't understood. He'd assumed that he wasn't strong enough, but his Lady had shot down that idea. After that, he'd thought there was some kind of internal conflict where the Japanese BP unit's Super A.I.s refused to slot Duke into the leader position until Deckerd was conclusively proven as deceased. That was problematic, as J-Decker’s corpse had been flying around causing havoc.

In the battles against the Chieftains and Victim, Duke finally realized that he couldn't just _take_ the position. It was a fiction, based off of studying footage from Japan and assuming erroneous things from that watching. He'd watched the BP units follow Deckerd into battle without hesitation, listening to his orders and obeying like a single well-oiled battle machine instead of separate mecha. That fiction fell apart when Duke stepped confidently into Deckerd's place only to discover that no one took his orders.

Deckerd's position was one of common agreement. Without the agreement in place, there was no position. 

The agreement was based in one thing that all his programming and downloads couldn’t help him with: emotion. Specifically, love. For the first time in Duke's life, he's seen Regina be utterly wrong about something. The emotions she so disdained were why the Japanese BP department functioned. The two Brits had approached the entire situation wrong, assuming that plugging a new leader into place would fix a gaping hole in the department's collective heart.

Regina had hardened herself to soft emotions, telling herself and her creations that anything beyond computer logic was evil. Yet Duke had witnessed the power of friendship and the unrivaled strength of love was something he himself had felt when saving his Lady.

Deckerd’s return had been a relief, of course, but it was the other Braves that Duke had watched in fascination. The scattered Brave Police department knitted neatly back into a cohesive unit, full of touchy-feeliness and Yuuta and bizarre habits like parking Gun Bike on top of J-Roader when Gunmax wasn’t looking. They drew back together, into a department underpinned so heavily with love and support for each other that they were more family than colleagues.

And Duke was on the outside, looking in. Deckerd tried to include him, but his clumsy attempts to join the department were too logical. Too stiff.

When Regina left, it deprived Duke of his last bastion of logical arguments. When she'd been here, he could comfort himself with her company and calm assertion that it was the other BP units' chaotic emotions that left him apart. Now he was on his own, and if there was a place for Duke in Japan, he was going to have to find it. Not take it; find it.

So he floundered. In Japan, in emotions, and in all the things he couldn’t be programmed for.

It was probably the most human he’d ever been.

 

**[* * * * *]**


	3. Pt. 3

**Title:** Directionally Challenged, Pt. 3  
 **Warnings:** Random prompts create random ficlets.  
 **Rating:** PG  
 **Continuity:** Brave Police J-Decker  
 **Characters:** All of ‘em  
 **Disclaimer:** The theatre doesn’t own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.   
**Motivation (Prompt):** An open post where I asked for people to please drop prompts for me, and I attempted to write them as fast they appeared. This is something I intend to continue with the Brave Police, as tiny cute ficlets are so easy and fun!

 

**[* * * * *]**   
_Drill Boy - trying to make Duke laugh_   
**[* * * * *]**

Duke was waging a difficult battle. It was against himself, so debatably he’d win either way. That didn’t make him any less stubborn, however, and he wasn’t going to give up without a fight.

Problem was, there were few weapons he could use in this particular battle.

It started this morning, when instead of fueling at the fueling station and waiting for a cursory check of his recharge stats with the Chief as per usual, he ventured out of the maintenance bay after the other BP units. They never used the fueling station, at least so far as Duke knew. They all grabbed several containers of their preferred fuel and took off. There was an hour before their shift started, and he usually didn’t make it to the Decker Room until then. He wanted to know what he was missing in that hour. 

It wasn’t that Duke was intentionally isolated from the others. He just…wasn’t necessarily included in everything. Before-shift shenanigans were referred to with laughter and gossip the rest of the day, and he’d only ever able to sit and hear the banter pass completely over his head. Part of it was a lack of invitation to join, but perhaps that itself stemmed from Duke being, ah, rather socially stunted.

Quite frankly, Duke had been a monumental prick when he first arrived. Heck, his arrival had made Gunmax’s introduction to the department look graceful in comparison.

But he was getting better! Sort of. Slowly, anyway. It wasn’t easy stepping out of his stiff, pre-programmed box of formal social interaction, but he was trying. Joining in on the Japanese Brave Police’s off-shift activities felt somehow unnatural, but then again, the idea of even _having_ off-shift time had been utterly alien when he’d transferred here.

So he did his best to casually join the group as they walked out this morning, trying not to look as out of place as he felt. Which didn’t work nearly so well as he’d hoped. Duke didn’t know it, but his face was a picture of apprehension, as if he expected the Braves to turn on him like a pack of wolves. Power Joe gave him a funny look, but a quick nudge from McCrane stopped even Drill Boy from saying anything. The crane made sure to give the Knight a small smile. It was the same smile he gave witnesses who felt threatened when testifying, but it apparently worked to soothe the wild Brit as well. Duke’s face twitched in the approximation of a smile in return, although it mostly just managed to make the Knight look faintly ill.

Duke felt ridiculously grateful for the crane’s polite acceptance of his presence. It still felt like he was imposing on the group, but really, what could possibly be exclusive about walking to the Decker Room? It all felt very normal, walking as a group down the halls. Maybe this wouldn’t be so difficult, after all. He sipped from his flask of gasoline and rolled it around his mouth idly, contemplating this odd new way of refueling as he watched Drill Boy bounce a soccer ball off the wall, twirl, skip forward, and kick again. He’d given up protesting the unprofessionalism running rampant around here. Between Drill Boy’s constant need to soccer (Duke hadn’t known ‘soccer’ was a verb until he met the shorter mecha), Gunmax’s perpetual smart-assery (he’d modified his internal dictionary to include that word, and entered Gunmax’s name as a synonym), and Commissioner Saejima’s hair (he’d scanned it twice before he believed it was real instead of some absurd wig), professionalism was a lost cause.

At least there was McCrane. Duke swallowed and turned his optics toward the Build Team’s leader under the cover of taking another sip of fuel. The crane was talking with Dumpson and Shadowmaru while Gunmax swaggered on up ahead. McCrane was like the last bastion of dignity. Duke didn’t know how he managed that quiet aura of competence amidst the chaos, but it was reassuring that someone could. Duke felt like he was struggling just to keep his posture straight, some days.

Power Joe nearly took a soccer ball to the head. “Watch it!”

“You watch it!”

“I’ll watch it go up your tailpipe if you don’t cut it out!”

“Nyah!” The littlest BP unit pulled down on the bottom of his optic and stuck out his tongue, something Duke had seen a few children on the streets do before. Also, the Boss did it when yelling at Gunmax about the green mecha filling out all his reports referring to Yuuta as _”that kid,’’_ but Duke didn’t think it had the same meaning then. Or maybe it did, if Power Joe’s expression was anything to go by.

“C’mere, Drill-bitty!” The Soccer Detective yelped and dodged around Dumpson as Power Joe took a swipe, but the dump truck smirked and stepped smartly of the way. Drill Boy was left exposed, optics huge and scared as Power Joe loomed over him. “Ha! Gotcha!”

“Noooooooo!” 

Ah, the headlock of doom. Duke felt a strange sensation tickle his engine pistons as Power Joe got an arm around Drill Boy’s neck and proceeded to noogie him into submission. The smaller mecha wailed helplessly, seeming to forget every single bit of combat programming ever installed in him. The strange feeling got stronger the more Drill Boy’s puppyish squirming went on, almost like there were carbonation in his tanks. Duke almost had to smile as the mecha’s arms flailed in an improbably noodlelike fashion. They didn’t have that many joints in their arms. Surely he was imagining things. 

Between the odd, bubbly catch in his engine and possible vision problems, maybe he should return to the maintenance bay and have Chief Toudou run an analysis on his systems.

Duke’s worried thoughts were interrupted by a shriek. A rather effeminate shriek, at that.

“ **Oh my God**!” Gunmax had stopped dead in the hall in front of the garage door. He’d opened it to look inside, which wasn’t surprising; Duke opened it himself every morning to check on Fire Roader, so he was sure both Deckerd and Gunmax did the same for their respective support vehicles. Although he certainly couldn’t picture either himself or Deckerd standing in the hall gaping with quite that level of gobsmacked astonishment. The Highway Patrolman’s mouth opened and closed like a fish, and his optics were so bright they were visible behind his visor. “What the -- how did -- “ Surprise flipped over to murderous intent in a fraction of a second, and Duke reared back on his heels as the green mecha whirled to confront the rest of the Braves. Funny, he hadn’t thought of Gunmax as particularly scary until right then. “ _Who did this?!_ ”

“Did what?” McCrane pointed out quite reasonably after they’d all taken a long moment to just stare at the fuming Motorcycle Detective. 

“This!” Gunmax screeched, one arm snapping out to point in quivering indignation into the garage. 

The back of Duke’s head felt a little warm and fuzzy at being included in the mass confused look passed around the group. He didn’t even stop to think about it before pressing forward with the others to crowd around the door.

Inside, J-Roader and Fire Roader were parked side by side, as usual. On a normal morning, Gun Bike would be parked off near the back, where Gunmax tended to wheel her in using the side door instead of the outer entryway. On Tuesdays, that meant he also got snagged by Chief Toudou at shift-end for his weekly system test, just as the rest of the Brave’s got flagged down on their respective days. 

That hour space where they were absent seemed to be a cue for miscellaneous pranking. Wednesday cued an unspoken signal for everyone to hide McCrane’s office supplies and leave hints for how to find them again, a la an investigative scavenger hunt. Dumpson’s desk collected messages taken by the other Braves, as Miss Ayako was in on the joke and ‘innocently’ called about twenty times every Thursday night. Last Friday, Power Joe’s phone got replaced by a Fischer Price play phone that actually worked but was kind of bright pink and fluffy. It made everyone who spoke through it sound like a chipmunk on drugs. The Saturday before, Drill Boy’s soccer balls had been replaced by tennis balls, and Duke still had no idea how the other Braves got Commissioner Saejima to approve that. Every Sunday, Shadowmaru’s desk moved all over the building, including one memorable occasion where it’d ended up somehow attached upside-down to the ceiling. This Monday, Deckerd had come back to the Decker Room to find that everyone had convinced Yuuta he’d left to join the circus. 

Gunmax got off comparatively easy. The Braves just kept parking Gun Bike on top of J-Roader every Tuesday, which was annoying for him to get her down again but at least was predictable.

Except that today wasn’t Tuesday, and Gun Bike wasn’t on top of J-Roader.

“You know, I believe I saw this once on the Discovery Channel. If Fire Roader has a litter of three-wheelers, we might need to get Gun Bike neutered,” Shadowmaru said thoughtfully, then laughed and took off running down the hall as Gunmax lunged for his throat. The ninja stayed just one step ahead as Gunmax swore bloody vengeance and pursued him. “Temper, temper!”

“ **I’ll kill you**!”

Duke blinked as they turned the corner, but he had to look back into the garage. “Is he going to be able to get Gun Bike down without help?” So far as he knew, Gunmax had to be within jumping range of Gun Bike in order to change to his Gunmax Armor mode. Considering how carefully Gun Bike’s tires were wedged into Fire Roader’s extended ladder, it looked like any movement at all would send the motorcycle crashing to the floor. It could be a problem.

“He’ll manage,” McCrane said calmly, and if Duke hadn’t turned right then, he never would have caught the bare hint of an urchin’s grin flickering across the mecha’s face. 

Oh. Ah. 

He looked into the garage again. Well, that made sense. Getting Gun Bike all the way up there had probably required a crane. Which…Gunmax would have figured out if he’d stopped to think about it, or if McCrane had looked even slightly guilty. As it was, McCrane looked every meter a responsible lieutenant that no one would so much as suspect might pull such a dastardly prank. Ladies and gentlemechas, presenting the Brave Police’s dignified frontman: McCrane the secret prankster.

As they turned to follow the sounds of shouting and violence, that strange feeling fluttered in Duke’s engine again. Bubbles percolated through his tanks and popped through his systems. He didn’t understand. The sensation wanted to tweak the corners of his lips and gurgle up his throat, but it didn’t feel as if he’d regurgitate liquid in any way. It was odd, and odder still was how…pleasant it felt. He thought it could possibly be -- somehow, maybe -- amusement.

He sternly schooled his face back into impassive detachment and swallowed down the strange feeling. A policeman should not laugh at his colleagues. It would be rude. 

The sensation died when the door to the Decker Room opened. A small, white sphere zinged through the air over Dumpson’s head, and Shadowmaru quite nearly followed it. The ninja executed one of those gravity-defying maneuvers his jet engines allowed him, however, and hot air smacked them all in the face as he zoomed back into the room before he even left it.

Dumpson almost hit the floor anyway, out of sheer reflex. “ _Whoa_!”

“My apologies!” the ninja called. “I was not expecting the door to open!”

From further into the room, Gunmax’s mocking laugh rang out. “Knock next time!”

“It’s the _Decker Room_ ,” Power Joe complained. “Why should we knock?” Besides the safety hazard of flying objects that weren’t always ninjas, obviously. 

The kung fu mecha straightened, having thrown himself in front of Drill Boy in a combat-ready stance the second he registered the ‘attack.’ Drill Boy, on the other hand, had immediately chased the ‘weapon’ that’d hurtled over their heads. He was bouncing back down the hall now, holding up the small white ball triumphantly. Power Joe eyed him as if checking for damage and whirled to march into the room after McCrane and Dumpson, who’d recovered from their initial alarm.

Duke hesitated. Drill Boy cheerfully jogged past him into the room, but the Knight Detective hovered on the threshold for a long moment. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting from all the noise and death threats, but this certainly hadn’t been it. Gunmax smacked the ball as Drill Boy threw it toward him, and the game resumed. 

“Open wide!” Shadowmaru teased, returning the serve at dangerous velocities.

The file folder in Gunmax’s hands intercepted the potentially harmful projectile and slapped it back across the room. “Why?” Gunmax grunted, orange optics narrow and glittering behind his visor.

“Because I’m going to,” paper whapped, and the ball sizzled on a return course, “make you _eat_ the ball!”

The green mecha danced back lightly, whipped about, and backhanded with his makeshift paddle so hard Duke winced, expecting the paper to rip. “Eat this!”

The ball pinged off the ceiling and past Shadowmaru’s guard, despite a desperate dive to intercept that slid the purple ninja headfirst across the Build Team’s desks. Drill Boy leapt up and chased down the ball again while Shadowmaru disappeared over the edge of the desks. “That’s a _spicy_ meatball,” came from out of sight, quoting something Duke didn’t recognize with an accent that he thought was trying (and failing, quite badly) to be Italian. The ninja sprang back into sight a second later. “Fortunately for you, I’m a good cook.”

McCrane inclined his head out of the way as Drill Boy pitched the ball toward Shadowmaru. _Whap!_

The ball went off Deckerd’s desk, and Gunmax had to lunge to get it. “You’ve never even been in a kitchen!” _Smack!_

“Says the mecha who hates summer!” Shadowmaru spun and switched hands mid-spin, managing to put a curve into the ball’s return flight. _Pow!_

Duke hastily dodged, glad he’d closed the door as the ball pinged off of it. Gunmax quickly hopped over Shadowmaru’s desk just in time to flick his wrist and bounce the ball toward the wall behind Yuuta’s desk. _Whapop!_ “What’s that have to do with anything?!” 

“If you can’t stand the heat, my friend -- ” A fast somersault, and the ninja launched himself up to intercept the ball with a two-handed hit that turned the ball into a streak of white aimed directly for Gunmax’s face. “ -- get out of the kitchen!” Gunmax yelped and stumbled back, file coming up in defense, and the ball smacked right into the center with enough force to leave a dent. 

Shadowmaru landed and smiled, looking deceptively mild. Gunmax slowly lowered his paperwork shield, glaring over the top, and the ninja offered a flask of gasoline like a peace offering. “Rematch tomorrow?”

The glaring didn’t abate. Gunmax didn’t take losing well. Or messing with Gun Bike, either. McCrane was smiling slightly at the catalogue he’d pulled out to read during the game, Duke noted. 

“ **Kill you dead** ,” the Motorcycle Detective muttered, but he accepted the gas.

“No, you won’t.” Shadowmaru inspected his makeshift paddle for damage. Duke looked at it in passing as he finally ventured toward his own desk, and he was surprised to see nothing but a few dents in the heavy paper. He’d always thought paperwork lasted forever, but he hadn’t been aware it could endure actual attempts at destroying it. How depressing. Never-ending reports, stored in indestructible files. “You like me, deep in your hidden heart of hearts,” the ninja said as he put the file back where it belonged. 

“You don’t even know what I said,” the green mecha said, tapping his own file on his desk to neaten the papers inside before putting it back. 

“Some desire to inflict bodily harm, I’m sure.” Their pens had become scrambled together during the game, and Shadowmaru sorted them out as he spoke. Gunmax absently took them as he handed them over. “Language is no barrier to true understanding.”

“Of bodily harm?”

“A punch to the face needs little translation, I’ve found.”

“Mm. True. How about vehicular homicide?”

“Some obscure message from a poor loser, I’d suspect.” 

Duke sat stiffly at his desk, head turned as far as he dared without looking like he was blatantly staring at the duo now sitting at their desks across from each other. The ticklish flutter of what he direly suspected would emerge as a schoolgirl giggle threatened to escape him. Gunmax and Shadowmaru were peacefully reorganizing their conjoined desks, setting up the file holders and gathering up the scattered papers that’d been tossed out at some point in the game. Their snide remarks were contradicted by the barrel of oil they were passing back and forth as they worked companionably together. Duke was almost boggled by the difference between what he heard and saw.

At the other desk, Power Joe was catching up on his soap opera addiction as McCrane studied his catalogue. Dumpson was tossing the little white ball back and forth with Drill Boy. The youngest Build Team member looked thrilled at the attention, but his burlier older teammate was subtly moving around under the cover of catching the ball. McCrane didn’t seem to notice that Dumpson was gradually edging into place to read over his shoulder.

It wasn’t that everyone didn’t know McCrane was hiding a stack of bridal magazines in his desk, but nobody was going to be so impolite as to dig through them to find out what’d he’d bookmarked. Power Joe’s optics were watching Dumpson almost as much as his computer screen, and even Drill Boy was grinning as he caught on. McCrane remained absorbed, and that’s the way they wanted it. One of Duke’s biggest blunders when still figuring out what was and was not to be openly talked about in the Decker Room was asking why Colonel Seia continued to visit McCrane when the Japanese Defense Forces liaison really should be reporting to the Council. That’d almost been as embarrassing for McCrane as it had been for Duke, at least once he’d figured out why the other three Build Team members were trying to drill holes in his helm via their optics. McCrane would probably shrivel up and die if anyone so much as mentioned his fantasy wedding plans, much less that they thought his guilty pleasure was adorable. 

Truthfully, Duke was as curious as the other Braves. Once he’d caught on to the possibility of human-mecha relationships -- and hadn’t _that_ been a shock! -- he’d been captivated by the different responses. Dumpson became flustered at the slightest hint of flirting but couldn’t seem to stop himself; Miss Ayako had a devilish talent at needling that weakness. Colonel Seia’s cold demeanor softened; McCrane became even more formal, but his dignified exterior clearly hid a hopeless romantic. Commissioner Saejima seemed benignly blind to everything, yet never mentioned how often reporter or colonel showed up. Yuuta grinned and blushed and all but cheered McCrane and Dumpson on. Chief Toudou seemed to have adopted the entire Brave Police department as his surrogate sons, which gave Duke the sometimes bewildering feeling that he was being repaired with paternal care. From a few cryptic things said in the maintenance bay, he thought that the Chief was protectively watching over the two lovestruck mecha and giving them advice on the side.   
On the other end of the spectrum, there was Vice-Commissioner Azuma. After witnessing the man’s frankly disgusted reaction just to Yuuta’s oldest sister affectionately patting Shadowmaru on the snout, Duke had decided that speaking with his Lady about the situation would be unwise. Which was very unfortunate, because he dearly wished to have her opinion on the subject. 

He was intensely curious as to what the gossip on McCrane’s magazine-reading would be next. Last he’d heard (via Power Joe, because the mecha had no discretion whatsoever), the colors were still pure white, sky blue, and pink. If that were true, the Knight Detective might be forced to do something drastic. Speak with Regina, perhaps, or merely send off to England for a subscription to a magazine with taste. Cream, olive green, and McCrane’s own navy blue were plainly the best route, and monogrammed linens would be far better than tacky flower patterns. Cherry blossoms? Ugh! How cliché!

Deckerd’s arrival interrupted Duke’s brooding. “Good morning,” the blue mecha called as the door opened.

Dumpson missed his catch and had to chase the ball. Conveniently, that meant McCrane didn’t spot him spying when the crane looked up and nodded to their leader. “Good morning, Deckerd. I trust you are well?”

That earned a warm smile in return, and Duke determinedly looked away. The fuzzy, warm feeling that’d been steadily blooming in the back of his mind cooled, and he couldn’t help but think again that he was invading the other Braves’ privacy. On a normal morning, he’d just be getting through the system checks right now. The Chief would review them with him as the technicians uncoupled him from the repair cradle, and it’d be another 15 minutes before he checked in on Fire Roader and finally arrived at the Decker Room. He’d skipped the routine this morning, and for what? To watch a prank and a game of Ping Pong Battle? To see the Build Team dote on each other while Gunmax and Shadowmaru attempted to play Jenga with a stack of papers and case files?

Putting it that way, nothing much had happened this morning. He’d sat in this very chair and watched the Japanese Brave Police do weirder things during their shifts. They weren’t doing anything astonishingly different beforehand, it seemed. So why did Duke ache inside to think he should stay behind tomorrow morning and miss their antics?

“Good morning, Duke,” Deckerd greeted him. 

Duke looked up as his deskmate sat down. Then he looked again, because he couldn’t stop himself. “Good morning, Deckerd. Ah…what is that?”

The blue mecha smiled fondly down at the giant plush panda hugged to his chest. Well, giant for a human, meaning that it was small but not incredibly tiny for a robot Deckerd’s size. “Yuuta and I went to the carnival last night. He won it in a balloon-popping game and gave it to me,” he explained, and his optics flicked to the side. Duke became aware of Drill Boy’s intense stare. “I find it a charming gift, don’t you?” His arms tightened slightly. “It’s difficult to put down.”

In other words, Drill Boy was going to steal the plushie as soon as Deckerd let go. And if Drill Boy didn’t swipe it, Power Joe was going to kung fu it away the moment Deckerd blinked. There was a distinctly predatory set to the power shovel’s shoulders as he innocently watched his soap operas. Duke had noticed that the Build Team had a bit of a panda thing going on. He knew _why_ in a factual way, because the incident with the giant panda invading Japan had been uploaded into his databanks upon activation. The panda-decorated pens McCrane sported took the case out of the realm of fact, however, and even Dumpson had an acquisitive air about him right now that Duke just didn’t quite understand. The Knight Detective glanced between the plushie bear and the Build Team, wondering just what about pandas he was missing.

Suddenly, there were long white legs invading his personal space. “Gunmax!”

The Motorcycle Detective leaned back on his hands, aft planted squarely on the file Duke had been about to open and legs draped across the ambulance’s lap. “That’s my name, **baby**. Don’t wear it out.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it. Sir Knight is less likely to scream it than the rest of us,” Shadowmaru said dryly as he stopped beside Deckerd. A ripple of snickers went around the room, although Deckerd darted a wide-opticked look toward Drill Boy before turning a genuinely entertained smile up at the ninja. Shadowmaru smiled back as he handed over a borrowed pen. “I would think he’s taking your name in vain to invoke the removal of your rear end from his paperwork, Gunmax.”

“It’s difficult to work around it,” Deckerd agreed, having much experience in Duke’s current predicament.

Gunmax leaned back further, arching his back over the desk divider and reclining on his elbows to look at their fearless leader upside-down. “You could always work on it,” he suggested in tones of mischief underlined by a loudly purring engine. That voice was one he pulled out often, but right now it seemed…different. Loaded with double-meaning. 

Duke glanced around the room, trying to get the joke, but it seemed he and Drill Boy were left out in the dark. The Soccer Detective grinned because Decker went from entertained to flustered in a split second, but the others all had looks on their faces that told the Knight he was missing something. Deckerd had pushed back in his seat, stammering nonsense as Gunmax’s legs drew up, one ankle sliding slowly up the opposite leg until Duke held only one foot in his lap. He debated pulling the file out from underneath the Patrolman’s aft, since only one edge of the green metal remained with how the mecha had managed to pose himself. He refrained, fearing that he’d end up with his hand trapped if Gunmax sat up again.

Just like that, in fact. “I’ve been told it’s wide enough, anyway,” the Patrolman said matter-of-factly, jumping off the desk as if nothing had happened.

“I only say such things because I care,” Shadowmaru said soulfully, walking beside him back to their desks.

“I woke up with a **Wide Load** warning decal glued to my back!” The visor glared. “How did you even know what it said?” Duke blinked as the glare cut toward him. “Did you -- “

“I’d never!” the British ‘bot said indignantly, then caught himself and wondered if that were really true. If Shadowmaru had approached him to help with a prank, would Duke participate? So far, he’d been exempt from the miscellaneous moronic acts of comradie the other Braves played on each other. Which he’d been rightly glad for, but now he wondered. 

He risked a quick look around the Decker Room before snapping his optics back down. The Build Team was just realizing that the panda plushie had mysteriously disappeared. Shadowmaru and Gunmax were playing innocent, both pointing fingers at the other and claiming they’d never seen a plushie bear, what bear, surely the Build Team was hallucinating. One too many rereadings of old case reports before recharge, obviously. Deckerd had on his best baffled smile as Drill Boy bounded over to peer under his desk. Duke wasn’t saying anything about the soft little presence that’d appeared under the desk partition and slid behind his legs, mostly because he didn’t know what to say. Gunmax had been a pest and an exceptionally vivid distraction, but the Knight had been all too aware of the panda being stuffed out of sight while everyone else was focused on the Motorcycle Detective’s antics.

Now there was a plushie panda bear hiding behind his legs, and Duke didn’t know what to do. He’d inadvertently been included in…what? The prank? The distraction? 

The group?

He kept his optics on his file, more than a little afraid that’d he give the game away if he looked at the others. The warm fuzzies were back, feeling like a kitten had taken up residence in the back of his head. The weird bubbles of laughter were trying to emerge as well, and he fought to control the twitching of his lips. He would not laugh at the Build Team being disappointed. He would not. He would not laugh at Deckerd and Shadowmaru debating whether it was actually possible for robots to hallucinate. And he certainly wasn’t going to laugh at Gunmax pretending to hallucinate Power Joe in a frilly apron. 

“It’s so you,” Gunmax claimed. “It’s got a tiger on it.”

“It does not!” The power shovel looked down anyway, checking. 

“A Jackie Chan tiger. It’s **precious**.” 

Bubbles and bubbles, because Duke was having a hard time eliminating that mental picture from his processors now. Power Joe’s ire ratcheted up at the unknown English word, but all the British mecha could think of when he took a quick look at him was kung fu action in a frilly apron. _Hi-ya!_

He concentrated on the case file. There’d been a recent arrest in an animal cruelty case that might be connected to the illegal fighting ring that’d been busted last month downtown. There were still ten minutes before the shift actually started, but Duke preferred to be prepared. 

Also, reading the report let him keep his face mostly hidden by his helm as he discreetly kicked the plushie up high enough to catch it with a hand under the desk and shove it into the top drawer. He’d give it back to Deckerd later, after the Build Team left on patrol. After that, it’d be up to the patrol car to keep the bear out of sight and mind. 

It seemed that would be an easier task than Duke had thought. Ten minutes was evidently enough time to redirect everyone’s attention from the missing bear to taunting their smallest unit. 

"Ball, ball, ball!" Power Joe lifted his feet with a long-suffering look, and Drill Boy skidded nearly underneath his chair without even pausing. "Baaaaaall!"

Dumpson raised an eyebrow and gently kicked the soccer ball on its way around the Build Team's desk just ahead of Drill Boy's grabbing hands. The action got an indignant sound reminiscent of a goose squawking as the smallest Brave overshot his turn and splatted against the wall. "Gaaak!"

The soccer ball went on its merry way, and a muffled, "Ball, ball!" signaled Drill Boy peeling his face off the wall again. McCrane smiled and used the heel of one foot to direct the much-coveted ball. Because Drill Boy had many soccer balls, but he was utterly intent on chasing the one that _moved_ , holy office furniture, it was _moving_ , must chase!

Shadowmaru fielded the ball without even putting down the report he was skimming. An ecstatic cry of, "Yay, ball!" preceded Drill Boy springing across the office toward him, but the ninja kicked the ball under the desk partition. Drill Boy dove in pursuit. He got stuck by one drill-bit shoulder, however, delaying him just long enough for the ball to get out of reach. 

Gunmax smirked, toeing the ball so it ran up his shin until he could bounce it off his knee. He palmed it mid-bounce and tossed it overhand to Deckerd. "That's cheating!" wailed after it, and Duke wasn't going to laugh. He _wasn't_. A perfect policeman did not sit at his desk and laugh at his fellow policemen going about a normal day. His Lady would disapprove. She would watch Drill Boy's ridiculous dance as he tried to anticipate just where Deckerd would punt the ball next, and her lip would curl. Duke just knew it. The warm glow of companionship and inclusion weren’t part of her programming, and the bubbles of amusement threatening to break his composure were glitches.

"Ball, ball, ball!"

Next thing Duke knew, there was a ball rolling across the desk toward him and an incoming Drill Boy right behind it. "I'm open!" Power Joe called, and Duke had to think fast. 

Too fast, because he had no concentration left for suppressing the laughter. His Lady would be so disappointed.

Not as disappointed as Drill Boy would have been if the Knight had refused to play, however, and a traitorous, contented part of him thought losing the battle about equaled out at the end of the war.

**[* * * * *]**


	4. Pt. 4

**Title:** Directionally Challenged, Pt. 4  
 **Warnings:** Random prompts create random ficlets.  
 **Rating:** PG  
 **Continuity:** Brave Police J-Decker  
 **Characters:** All of ‘em  
 **Disclaimer:** The theatre doesn’t own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.   
**Motivation (Prompt):** An open post where I asked for people to please drop prompts for me, and I attempted to write them as fast they appeared. This is something I intend to continue with the Brave Police, as tiny cute ficlets are so easy and fun!

 

**[* * * * *]**   
_Deckerd -- in need of cuddles_   
**[* * * * *]**

Sometimes it happened. They weren’t perfect. They were as human as, well, humans, and sometimes humans hit low points in their lives. 

The older humans got, the more they made the association between circumstances and emotion. Not always, not reliably, but more so than their children. The younglings of the species could swing without a moment’s notice and not a clue as to the reason. Figuring out themselves was part of the process of growing up.

Seeing a toddler burst into tears or a teenager lapse into depression upset many people. Seeing a giant robot crumple into an insecure little ball of fluctuating feelings could do no less. In fact, it often inspired far more helplessness in the observer. A child or a teenager could be comforted, but what could be offered to big metal mecha?

Chief Toudou had gotten used to alarmed calls from the technician on duty when a Brave Police unit showed up, broken on the inside for no discernable reason. The techs could handle actual damage. Give them a tool and a piece of machinery gone wrong, and the Chief would be content to supervise. Hand them a robot hiding a flood of overwhelming emotion behind a poor mask of composure, however, and the techs would run for the Chief’s office. Nobody was quite as qualified to handle emotional injury as the Chief. Technical stuff, yeah, good, they were trained for that -- but where was the spec manual for when Miss Ayako ditched Dumpson the first time to chase down a juicy tip? Or, heck, Duke being homesick? Was there an off-switch for that shit?

So the technicians ran for the Chief, because the Chief knew everything. What he didn’t know, he made up on the spot. He hadn’t become Chief Engineer for a project this important without learning to extrapolate from guesswork, and what he couldn’t make up on his own, he imitated wholesale from Yuuta. Having an eight-year-old around the place actually gave everyone a lot of perspective on the straight-forward solutions for matters adults made far too complex. See someone in pain? Big or small, metal or flesh, Yuuta opened his heart to them. Commissioner Saejima had recognized him as the solution for when the adults got too caught up in appearances to properly react. Toudou had been skeptical at first, but witnessing the wide eyes and cluelessness of his subordinates the first time the Build Team got in a fight and stormed off in opposite directions had convinced him his old friend was right. Too many people could only see the metal exteriors. It blinded them to the young, easily-hurt hearts inside.

The Brave Police could be repaired according to the Book, but only up to a point. Which was when Chief Toudou got called in.

He was the one who dragged Shadowmaru off by one doggy ear to visit the small gravesite for Kagerou in the corner of the Tomonaga backyard. Yuuta’s eldest sister had been able to handle the grieving mecha from there, but the actual ninja-wrangling had been left to the Chief. Toudou was also the one who sat down with Drill Boy every time he crept off into a corner of the maintenance bay to hide from the rest of the Build Team. It wasn’t that Drill Boy didn’t want Dumpson’s rough comfort or McCrane’s quiet support, but the youngest BP unit had never entirely gotten over distrusting the other mecha when it came to his beloved Fey. There just hadn’t been _time_ for him to swing from running away from the other BP units to trusting them with her. He tried to mourn in secret, and that layered guilt on top of the grief because he _knew_ he should trust the others more, and then the Chief had to talk him back from the edge of hysterics. Talk him back, calm him down, and comfort the poor kid. Poor Drill Boy. Poor all of them, really, having to be robots raised among humans. 

The Chief had learned how to handle his creations’ emotional instability. His brother had children, and Toudou had discovered that raising four squirming pink babies was surprisingly similar to raising seven multicolored metallic kids. Well, eight now that’d he’d apparently acquired Duke, who’d latched onto the head mechanic’s easy paternal air like an affection-starved orphan. It was like having a family without any of the perks of sex beforehand and a homelife afterward. 

Then again, Toudou had always lived for his job. Besides, he’d heard that puberty negated pretty much all of the perks in one fell swoop. Still, between Shadowmaru’s lingering sadness for Kagerou, Drill Boy’s grief for Fey, and Power Joe’s broken heart over a delusional love affair with Lua, Toudou figured puberty had nothing on making children into police. The BP units didn’t need hormones to fuck them up; they had criminals screwing with them every which way from Sunday. 

When it came to problems within the team, however, Chief Toudou tended to field the Braves back into the fray on their own. He was not going to become their crutch. Their support, of course, because that’s what friends and family were for. But he’d seen what happened when one of the Braves got too attached, even if the emotional manipulation had been deliberately meant to cause crippling co-dependency. The last thing the department needed was seven more Gunmaxes and all the mecha’s associated interpersonal issues. They had to learn how to deal with themselves and each other on their own. The Chief would be there to advise and comfort them, but nobody could solve all their problems. They had to step up and work it out when problems cropped up.

Like Deckerd’s complete and total reliance on Yuuta. It was a strong bond of childhood friends Toudou sincerely hoped would stand the test of time, but sometimes watching the two grow up together was enough to twist something aching in his chest. And when they were apart?

It happened. Deckerd couldn’t be with Yuuta 24/7. Even if the boy tried to include the Brave Police in his life that much, it just wasn’t physically possible. Shadowmaru could watch over his family; Power Joe could show up outside his school on any given day of the week; Gunmax could kidnap him after school just to give the other BP units panic-attacks; Deckerd could take him home every night and recharge in the Tomonaga garage. Yet, there were still times when Yuuta simply had to be elsewhere, distracted by non-Brave things, and Deckerd’s reaction was…predictable.

Take the past week, for instance. Toudou had found out what was going on after things started because he was an engineer, not a policeman, but he’d definitely noticed the increased frequency of concerned questions the other Braves asked. “How’s Deckerd?” hadn’t been asked so often since the blue mecha had almost died. Since BP-110 was most certainly _not_ dead, the Chief had done some inquiring about the situation from Saejima before sternly ordering the nosy ‘bots to ask Deckerd themselves.

Apparently, it’d all related to a weird but easy case. Shadowmaru had needed a human face for something, and Yuuta had of course volunteered. It'd been a harmless mission that'd sent the child into a shop asking for an item requiring the shop assistant to duck momentarily into the back room. Shadowmaru just needed that moment's diversion to complete his investigation. Simple, yes? No problem, and no danger. 

What the Ninja Detective had neglected to mention before Yuuta and Deckerd agreed to the diversion was that the shop was two days travel away. The case involved illegal import smuggling in the city, but the lead Shadowmaru had followed led up through the country, nearly on the other side of Japan. Yuuta had been fine with that -- roadtrip with Shadowmaru! -- but Deckerd had only been able to force his smile.

“I’m fine,” he told the technicians the first night Yuuta was gone. The techs nodded, blissfully able to ignore undercurrents of unhappiness in favor of purely mechanical maintenance. 

They were more uncertain the next morning, standing aside warily as the blue mecha briskly disconnected himself from his rarely-used repair cradle and strode out of the bay without a word. Deckerd usually spent his nights at Yuuta’s house, but he wasn’t normally so stand-offish toward others. 

“Woke up on the wrong side of the bed?” Power Joe hazarded.

“He drank diesel before bedtime,” one of the techs joked back, and there was a good-humored argument going between techs and the Build Team about whether or not Deckerd was a morning person by the time Toudou came in that morning.

He only got suspicious by the second day. Drill Boy showed up outside his office, fingers tapping together nervously when the head engineer opened his door. 

“Is Deckerd okay?” the littlest BP unit asked. Toudou raised an eyebrow, checked Deckerd’s stats, and sent Drill Boy on his way reassured that the blue mecha was just fine. While it was a little odd that Drill Boy would come asking, the Braves did occasionally suffer from flashes of insecurity. 

He overheard a puzzling conversation from a knot of technicians over by the maintenance bay’s garage door later, however. “Think we should do something?”

“Like what? Get him a teddybear?”

“He likes food, doesn’t he? My wife could pick up some miso, or maybe cakes from the shop down the street…”

That’d gotten an odd laugh, like the other techs weren’t sure the suggestion had been serious. Was comfort food the answer?

The question was revealed when the Chief went outside to see what the gossip was about. A disconsolate patrol car slumped on his tires outside of Police HeadQuarters. That was the most depressed-looking machine Toudou had ever seen. No question about who it was, either; Deckerd could fool most eyes, but not when even his lightbars sagged. Deckerd had always worn his emotions openly, and no time more so than now, apparently. 

Toudou sighed, patted the hood of the sad car in passing, and went to see Saejima about why exactly one of his babies was hurt today. 

It turned out to be the prospect of four days without Yuuta. _Four days._ The Chief didn’t known if he should roll his eyes at the tension filling the Decker Room, or lock himself in his office for a few days to escape it. Yuuta and Deckerd were all but joined at the hip, but the level of _‘Woe is me’_ being projected by the patrol car was a tad ridiculous. Which…was on par with how Toudou’s nephew acted when grounded from watching television, actually, and his sister-in-law often bemoaned how connected the brat and TV were. Alright, so Deckerd was a mess at the moment. Surely Yuuta was having a good time out in the country with Shadowmaru? Adventure was adventure to an eight-year-old. Toudou could make his moping nephew happy with a ride to the ice cream shop, after all. 

Putting it that way, it’d seemed like a viable solution back at HQ, too. The adventure, not the ice cream. “He needs a distraction,” Toudou told Gunmax when the troublemaker casually wandered into the garage to do his level best at being a jerk and a concerned teammate at the same time. “Get him involved in a case so he doesn’t have time to brood.”

“I -- uh, I mean, we _tried_ that,” Toudou’s favorite idiot complained, “but the only thing going on right now is that animal cruelty case with the miniature exotic animal breeds. He actually snapped at one of the store owners McCrane was following up on! I thought we’d have to take his pistol away, but then he disappeared. Azuki -- ” 

“Miss Tomonaga,” the Chief corrected him, because being an obnoxious son of a Harley Davidson didn’t mean Gunmax was allowed to get away with poor manners in Toudou’s domain. Also, Shadowmaru got his wings ruffled every time someone was too familiar with Yuuta’s sisters, and Gunmax and the ninja caused enough property damage with _friendly_ tussles. 

“ -- Miss Kurumi called to say he was in the garage petting that damn cat of hers. He says he’ll come back to work tomorrow morning.” Gunmax threw up his hands in exasperation at his partner. “They’re cute little animals. How can he _not_ get involved when they’re showing up mutilated?!” He saw the smirk as the Chief caught the ‘cute’ slip and crossed his arm in a huff. “ **Unbelievable**.”

Deckerd did indeed come back to work by day three. Unfortunately, he came back to sit resolutely at his desk and sulk.

The Chief started greeting the BP units with, “Ask him yourself.” 

Shadowmaru made a phone call about touring the town after the case was solved that afternoon, upping the Decker Room’s Yuuta-free days from four to six. Deckerd just stared at the phone once the ninja hung up. The others stared at him. He ignored the concerned looks and started filling out reports so vigorously the papers tore under his pen.

“I don’t begrudge Yuuta the chance to visit a new and exciting place,” he mumbled to Toudou when one visit too many from the other Braves finally prodded the Chief into summoning the blue mecha in for a systems test. The man hummed acknowledgement and pretended to be examining something on a clipboard, giving the mecha a chance to talk. He made useless notations about nothing while Deckerd stared at the opposite wall and tried to deal with _feelings_. Far be it from Deckerd to even think about calling Yuuta back early! He’d never do that. Yuuta was young and obviously excited about driving around inside someone willing to break speed limits and drift around turns. But... “He’s with _Shadowmaru_ ,” the ‘bot said miserably, unable to logic away his loneliness and guilt. “Doesn’t he want to -- “

He looked away from the wall before he said it out loud and sounded selfish. Those big optics clouded and begged the Chief to make it all better. _”Doesn’t he want to be with me?”_ he didn’t ask. _”Doesn’t he miss me?”_

“Deckerd…” The Chief smiled and rested a hand on the mecha’s ankle. “He’d probably love it if you went out to join them.”

But, being Deckerd and therefore a self-sacrificing martyr, he didn’t. Of course he didn’t. It might imply that Shadowmaru wasn’t enough to make Yuuta happy, or maybe Deckerd was hung up on the idea that friends had to be invited in order to be welcome. Chief Toudou knew that Yuuta would have picked up on the slightest hint of the mecha’s feelings and been back in an instant if the boy had heard anything in Deckerd’s voice, but the big doofus never let anything slip. 

Instead, days four and five passed with no Yuuta, and Deckerd stopped recharging. The other Brave Police gave up on asking the Chief for advice by the middle of the fourth day and started trying to cheer up their leader on their own. Gunmax left handcuffs all over the place. Duke bought a fishtank and tried to get Deckerd interested in setting it up with him. Dumpson brought Miss Ayako back to the Decker Room for a working date. Power Joe borrowed one of his friend’s paint sets and finger-painted Drill Boy’s drill bits into a rainbow. McCrane tried to get his opinion on traditional Japanese versus more ‘modern’ Western ceremonies of the civil nature, although what specific civil ceremony he was alluding to was never named. 

Toudou kept a careful eye on them but was satisfied that they could handle it. Nothing but Yuuta’s return would restore Deckerd’s good spirits, but he just didn’t want the whole department running to him every time there was a problem. It was bad enough that his techs did that the minute things went wonky. 

By day six and the phone call about the malfunctioning ferry, the other six BP units were giving Deckerd worried looks that he wasn't even noticing. McCrane quietly asked the Chief to come to the Decker Room in order to ask him what they should do.

Toudou leaned on a corner of Yuuta’s desk and looked at the Braves over the top of Deckerd’s bent head. “I think you should do something about it.”

The six Braves looked at him. They looked at Deckerd. Sadly, the patrol car didn't so much as register the discussion despite the fact that he was right there in the room while it happened. 

“That was not very helpful,” McCrane said after some thought.

“Yuuta’s going to enter university eventually,” the engineer shot back gruffly. “What’re you going to do when that happens, ask me for help every day for four years?”

There was a short silence. A short, _painful_ silence. Like most children their age, the concept of planning that far ahead clearly hadn’t occurred to them yet. They were old enough to crush on beautiful women, but young enough to completely miss the implications of their Boss being in primary school. 

Oi. It was tough being a dad to eight kids of varying maturity.

“Point taken,” Gunmax got out slowly. “I’m going to go with **no thank you** on that one.” 

Power Joe twitched slightly, one optic bigger than the other. He seemed to be seeing into a time when his schoolchildren friends actually had careers. Horror was dawning over Drill Boy’s face (the Boss would leave?!), and Dumpson looked like someone had popped his tires. One side of McCrane’s mouth developed a tic as a whole future suddenly yawned in front of him. A future beyond a -- purely hypothetical, you understand -- wedding, that was.

Duke alone seemed to easily accept what the Chief had said, but then, Duke knew what it was like to be left behind. He’d matter-of-factly accepted a bleak future where they were abandoned in a junk pile at the end of their usefulness, and nothing Toudou or Yuuta said had ever shaken that future from his mind. The only one who could ever change his mind was half a world away, unaware of his thoughts. At least until Toudou convinced her to visit Japan again, anyway.

Every optic turned to Deckerd, hunched shoulders and depressed cloud compressed into one miserable mech. Four days, huh? Try four years. It’s not that Yuuta wanted to leave Deckerd behind, but life sometimes separated friends and family.

The Chief didn’t miss the way Gunmax’s visor turned briefly toward him, suddenly taking note of the crow’s feet and gray hairs, but that, too, was part of realizing the future was there and it wasn’t always bright. Children did that. They grew up, they hit their highs and their lows, and…well, the lucky ones had others there to help them out of the lows and be with them during the highs.

It started with Duke trying to draw Deckerd into conversation. It was stilted, because Duke was the uncrowned king of polite small talk but not much for extended discussions outside of work-related topics. It forced Deckerd out of his thoughts for a while, and that’s when the crowned -- or at least helmeted -- king of innuendo and horrible Engrish stepped in. Gunmax invaded his personal space, perching on the desk in front of him so every time the blue mecha tried to look down and away, he got an optic-full of something no well-mannered mecha would be caught staring at. That got Deckerd out of his own head enough to become flustered, and McCrane kept up the distraction by interrupting every few minutes to drop his hand on one blue shoulder and ask an entirely appropriate question. Gunmax immediately countered with an entirely inappropriate question, and the two passed Deckerd’s attention back and forth between them until their blinking, befuddled leader didn’t know what was going on anymore. 

At that point, it seemed an opportune time for some physical activity. Which was fortunate, because Power Joe and Drill Boy barreled into him like a tag-team from CareBear Hell. They press-ganged him into an impromptu wrestling match. Dumpson started out supervising but was soon snagged by an ankle and sucked into the match himself. The others laughed, then yelped and tried to evade, but to no avail. Power Joe and Drill Boy were on a mission, and none could resist their cheer. 

It ended with the Decker Room a complete mess: papers flung willy-nilly and desks shoved to the side, and a pile of BP units recharging on the floor, burying Deckerd but for one foot sticking out.

Yuuta and Shadowmaru did double-takes when they came in, but the pile slept on. The ninja smiled softly, and Yuuta giggled. Shadowmaru transformed and carefully picked his way into the pile, trying to find a clear spot to lie down. Various limbs shifted. Duke groaned and managed to wriggle until he got his windshield out from under Dumpson’s head. The dump truck promptly slung an arm over the ambulance’s midriff and used that as a substitute pillow. Power Joe’s held slid off Dumpson’s hip and landed with a _clang_ on Shadowmaru’s back. The ninja jumped, startled, then settled down as McCrane murmured nonsense and turned over to curl around him from the other side. 

Yuuta got the camera out of his desk and took pictures, grinning widely. When it seemed the robots had subsided back into deep recharge, he jumped down off the ledge his desk was on and climbed up the nearest leg. 

By the time Toudou checked in an hour later, there was a boy sound asleep in Deckerd’s arms, and the future seemed very far away.

 

**[* * * * *]**   
_Dumpson - getting beaten at his own game_   
**[* * * * *]**

"Nyeh, Dumpso~on?" Ayako blinked up at the red mecha, eyes limpid pools of innocence. Yeah, innocence as done by another human who dressed in skin-tight red pants, but that human also sported horns and a tail. "Don't you like wrestling with me~?"

Like it? _Like it?_

Dumpson swallowed the series of disconcerted noises that were trying to get out and wondered if he could just forfeit. Because with her arms wrapped around his palm and her br -- bo -- ti -- _chest_ pressed to his hand, he was effectively pinned. 

He'd never stood a chance, really.

 

**[* * * * *]**   
_Gunmax - AnimeCon: Gunmax VS the fangirls_   
**[* * * * *]**

So of course Drill Boy was the one who picked up the phone. "Brave Police! Soccer and emergency services!"

"...stop answering the phone like that, **brat**."

"Gunmax!" The soccer-mad mecha sat up so fast he nearly head-desked on accident. "How's it going?"

"Ah. Well, I suppose. The stolen goods were found at a vendor booth, and we're tracing the shipping invoice through the union now." There was a faint noise in the background of the call, like a hundred squeaking mice. The squeals only grew louder the longer Gunmax talked.

"What _is_ that?" Drill Boy asked, cocking his head as if it would help him listen better. The noises were kind of odd. Sort of a constant _’eeeeee’_ sound as repeated by a hundred un-oiled door hinges. 

Gunmax’s tone was, as usual, brash and loud, but he had to up his volume to be heard clearly above the background noise. “Nothing.”

"Sounds like you're at the zoo,” Drill Boy guessed. Where had the convention been in America? Was it San Diego or Los Angelas? Didn’t San Diego have a world-famous zoo? “Are you at the zoo? Oh, oh! Bring us back pictures of the pandas! And the giraffes! And the tigers, you gotta get pictures of the tigers -- "

" **Cram** it," Gunmax snapped crankily. "I'm not at the zoo. I'm at the damn Anime Con, still."

"So...what's that sound?" With some effort, Drill Boy scraped up a detail from the case. He hadn’t really been paying attention when Shadowmaru and Gunmax had left for the USA, as there’d been a really great match on TV at the time. "Electronic toys?"

Gunmax's voice was flatter than Duke's after being asked about the color of Regina's underwear. "Fangirls." The level of disgust was also eerily similar. As was the hidden embarrassment. 

Embarrassment? Blood in the water to the Drill Boy-shark. "Ooo, do you have gi~i~rl problems, Gunmax?" he teased in a sing-song. Meanwhile, he was trying to figure out what was wrong with fangirls. Sometimes the Brave Police department got letters of appreciation from citizens, and everyone wrote thank-you letters back. Even Gunmax, although he complained it was a waste of time. Pfft. As if Drill Boy hadn’t read over his shoulder enough times to know Gunmax loved the attention. 

" **You could say that**." The squealing surged as the green mecha switched back to Japanese. "Remind me to strangle the Commissioner. He could have warned us that anything from Japan is like a fetish item here.” The shrieking _’eeeee’_ peaked, and Gunmax went wholesale English instead of his usual half-assed Engrish, careful pronunciation of the odd, clipped consonants and all. “ **Shut. Up. I'm trying to talk, here!** " 

It came through as a disgruntled, muffled mutter, and Drill Boy was confused. It'd sounded like Gunmax had covered the receiver with the palm of his hand before yelling. "Gunmax?"

"Yeah, anyway," the voice on the other side of the ocean was suddenly back to being clear. As was the squealing, which hadn’t seemed to calm down any. "I haven't been able to get Shadowmaru out of the rafters for days. They're hunting him or something. Maybe they've already caught him. Or maybe he's using them as his own personal information army, **I don't know** anymore. Look, I've gotta run. Kind of literally, because there’s a flock of them headed this way, and I’m really outnumbered. I'm sending my report this evening so -- get off my leg! **Off, please!** \-- process that before morning, okay? **_Thank_ you**."

Drill Boy blinked as the other end of the phone hung up abruptly. He couldn't tell if that last part had been addressed to him or not. 

Either way, this was one report he wasn't going to miss reading!

 

**[* * * * *]**

**[A/N:** _That’s the last from the prompt post. Is anyone reading these? Meh. Sorry if I’m spamming. No more of these until I get more prompts, so that’ll cut down on the spam._ **]**


	5. Pt. 5

**Title:** Directionally Challenged, Pt. 5  
 **Warnings:** Random prompts create random ficlets.  
 **Rating:** PG  
 **Continuity:** Brave Police J-Decker  
 **Characters:** All of ‘em  
 **Disclaimer:** The theatre doesn’t own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.  
 **Motivation (Prompt):** An open post where I asked for people to please drop prompts for me, and I attempted to write them as fast they appeared. This is something I intend to continue with the Brave Police, as tiny cute ficlets are so easy and fun!

**[* * * * *]**  
 _Gunmax - "Lemme tell you about that time I went undercover as an exotic dancer"_  
 **[* * * * *]**

Once they got past that (embarrassing, oh dear Lord did Duke actually put his foot _that far_ up his own bumper?) unfortunate first impression, Duke and Gunmax got on splendidly. By which it’s meant that they didn’t try to kill each other while out on patrol. 

For Gunmax, that was actually an improvement over his relationship with some of the Brave Police. Most of the Brave Police. Alright, so all of the Brave Police, depending on the day. Hell, even Deckerd still tried to punch his lights out occasionally. Shadowmaru just shuriken-ed his aft when he got too obnoxious. The Build Team used nunchaku, soccer balls, and full body contact. Or pens in McCrane’s case, but he was known for his restraint when it came to violence. 

It’s how the other Braves showed they _cared_ , or so they claimed when the Chief met them at the entrance of the maintenance bay with his best unimpressed face on. Gunmax always met that look grinning, sometimes with a split lip or while holding up a busted, sour-faced teammate on a friendly shoulder, and he inevitably told the ‘old man’ to ‘ **chill out**.’ That was part of the reason why the other Braves still had implicit freedom to continue trying to beat the Motorcycle Detective up. Chief Toudou figured that eventually the macho idiot would learn his lesson. Or, backup plan: the other Braves’ brawling would improve, because they sure as hell weren’t landing nearly enough hits on the smart ass yet.

Alright, so the truth was that they got away with their behavior because they were essentially a bunch of kids. Children, except children brought online with violence inherent in their programming. There wasn’t one of the original team that hadn’t lit their optics for the first time as sentient beings ready to fight. Deckerd’s second time coming online, post-processor wipe, had happened in a rush of combat programming that’d taken over just in time for him to save Yuuta. The Build Team’s reprogramming to include Deckerd’s emotional aberrations had reprioritized their protocol functions as well, repurposing them from being Deckerd’s support team into full combat partners. Their initial first priority had been to assist in the construction projects the increase in robot violence had left around the city, while Deckerd handled the actual fights. They weren’t supposed to join in the combat until called upon. When they’d come online as real people, their construction function had taken a backseat to being full fighters.

Combat was something they were programmed for. Fighting was specifically _why_ Drill Boy had been brought online at the time he had. Kagerou’s whole purpose in life had been to refine Shadowmaru’s abilities, making the ninja a better fighting and stealth machine. Shadowmaru himself preferred investigation, but he didn’t carry his swords because he wanted to look pretty. He carried them because he’d been trained, programmed, and trained again in how to use them against other machines. 

_Not_ fighting was a choice. It was a refusal of programming imperative, and not an easy one. McCrane wanted to be a pacifist, but there was a reason he was classified as BP-301, the Combat Detective. His programming had a special edge to it that the other Braves lacked, just as he lacked in other areas. Power Joe had gotten kung fu programming to mesh with his springy joints and lanky build; Dumpson had the best wrestling routines of any of them, able to use his bulky build to the best advantage. McCrane, in turn, had the best fight _analysis_ suite. He could predict a fighting style’s moves within minutes of observation, and imitate it himself or instruct others on how to counter the style. It made him invaluable on defense, which perhaps had been the key point that’d caught Colonel Seia’s attention long enough to turn interest into…whatever it was between them.

But choosing not to use his abilities had worked out as well as denying he had human desire had. Greed and lust were part of him, as gut-deep and undeniable as the urge to fight. He’d only reluctantly come to grips with his innate programming and human nature. McCrane didn’t want to fight, but he did. It was part of the job, and part of himself. 

Chief Toudou understood that about McCrane, as he understood what the combat programming protocols did to all of them. It made violence their first recourse. Tempering that violence with learning was like having a bunch of fist-fighting toddlers grow up in the course of a week. It still came out unpredictably, and usually in fits of rage. The Build Team had turned on each other frequently the first month of their lives, and high-stress situations still brought out Drill Boy’s immaturity badly. Deckerd had had longer to adjust, drawing his behavioral example from the months Yuuta had spent with him in the secret hangar. Shadowmaru had gotten the worst of his violent first impulses out of the way while training with Kagerou and watching the engineers who’d worked on them. 

Gunmax…well, Gunmax hadn’t been brought online to fight. Gunmax had been brought online to work in Highway Patrol, which was 50% regular patrols, 40% detective work on specific cases, and 10% dealing with gangs who got ahold of high-tech gizmos and ran amuck on the roads with them. He had combat protocols, but they ranked somewhere around third on his Super A.I.’s priority list. 

The Motorcycle Detective literally thought differently than the other BP units. Toudou was surprised they didn’t fight more often, to be frank. 

So Chief Toudou looked the other way when his giant robot kids got into fights. They weren’t trying to kill each other. It was more along the lines of playground fights when pre-adolescent kids simply reached the end of their experience-limited ways to articulate what they felt. They weren’t old enough to deal with each other in better ways yet, and it didn’t help that Gunmax pushed the other Braves just enough to trigger their first instinct. Inevitably, somebody lashed out at him. 

It wasn’t like it happened all the time. Gunmax was able to get along with the rest of the BP units for weeks at a time without anyone taking a swing at him. The banter always ran high around him, however, and he had a need to test boundaries. Months after Deckerd had dragged him into the Brave Police Department by one wrist and a pair of handcuffs, the green mecha’s social insecurities were still deep enough for his friendship with the other Braves to sometimes trip and flounder. It was some twisted bit of reasoning that involved trying to push them away before they rejected him, and the lurking assumption that if he provoked them enough, they _would_ toss him away. 

The other BP units didn’t follow his bizarre chain of emotionally-damaged thought, but they knew he didn’t truly mean half the stuff he spouted at them when he got real twitchy. His mouth ran away with him, like Drill Boy’s on most days. The Motorcycle Detective just had a far more cutting tongue when his mouth got out of control, and eventually, he pricked at them enough to react. Reaction, not thought, turned them on him in frustration. 

Like they told the Chief afterward, sheepish but adamant, they did it because they cared. And Gunmax shrugged off the occasional shuriken or flung pencil with nothing more than a smirk and a laugh because he understood that. Everyone had a snapping point, and he deliberately prodded them to that point, expecting them to turn away but hoping for the violence instead. Because a full-body tackle wasn’t turning away from him. The punch or soccer ball at his head took the place of unspoken words they just weren’t old or experienced enough to reassure him with. Reassurance that they _wouldn’t_ abandon him, that they _weren’t_ like Officer Kirisaki, and they were going to stick with him and like him despite the hurtful things that came out of his mouth, trying to shove them away.

They were a bunch of kids learning how to get along, handicapped by the fact that they were surrounded by and programmed for fighting. Chief Toudou understand that, and he rolled his eyes every time Gunmax caught Deckerd’s fist mid-swing, because there was always that one butthead in every group who didn’t know how to deal with his emotions any other way than making fun of everyone else. The Chief’s favorite idiot was that butthead, and the Chief couldn’t even blame him. Gunmax provoked the violence, but at least he didn’t take offense at it. He just palmed Deckerd’s fist and smiled an odd half-amused smile that really meant he liked his partner, desperately wanted to keep him as his partner, and he felt a little guilty that he’d rubbed Deckerd’s nerves raw just to assure himself the patrol car felt the same. 

Duke had a better upbringing than that. Regina, after all, was twelve, not Yuuta’s mere eight years old. She was a model of composure and level-headed reactions under pressure. Gunmax’s various, uh, ‘quirks’ of personality were immensely irritating, but even the hotshot’s most annoying antics slid off of Duke’s unflappable Britishness (totally a word) with little effect. It did not befit a gentleman to meet mockery or sniping comments with raised fists. He even, when he was in the right mood, snarked back in dry tones that rivaled the Sahara Desert and left the Motorcycle Detective snickering behind his reports. 

He was probably the only BP unit to catch on that, despite the mouth that _provoked_ everything, Gunmax never once started the fights. In response to that observation, the Knight Detective offered no violence. And Gunmax’s prickly, defensive jackassery eased back in response. Which, in turn, made his commentary more entertaining instead of offensive, and therefore Duke was more likely to respond in kind.

Hence, their oddly successful rapport on the job. They had next to zero comradie outside it, but that’d made things strangely easier. Gunmax tested the other Braves so often because they were his friends and insisted on _being_ his friends, on or off the job. Duke was just…a coworker. It made their relationship simpler. Gunmax doubted his intentions less, and valued his partnership more as a result. 

Duke had managed to earn Gunmax’s respect. Like most things about the green mecha, it’d been an utterly backward process that somehow still made sense -- at least to those who knew what was going on. So…Chief Toudou, pretty much, because who the hell else knew what went on in the Motorcycle Detective’s head.

Gunmax respected professionalism. He made fun of it, because life was too short not to make fun of _everything_ , and also because God knew letting the others know he’d actually respect them if they acted like real cops would probably make his life unbearable. He was already at his wit’s end over how the department functioned in general. Their version of acting like actual policemen made his tanks bottom out. Just…no. He loved the Boss, he really did, but working with six mecha who regarded an 8-year-old boy as their role model left him wanting to poke fun of them all even more. When he wasn’t knocking his helm against the nearest wall.

Because heaven help the mecha who suggested that, hey, maybe dragging an untrained _child_ into _dangerous situations_ was a _bad idea_. Gunmax had thought Deckerd would take his head off the one time he brought up leaving Yuuta behind. Power Joe had nearly clocked him when he’d asked McCrane about Colonel Seia maybe teaching Yuuta some hand-to-hand skills. Apparently, the idea of Yuuta as an unarmed noncombatant was so deeply ingrained in the other Braves -- or maybe they were just that invested in being his guardians? -- that they took actual offense to the thought of omitting the Boss from stuff like, say, _giant robot death matches._ Which was what 90% of the Brave Police department’s cases turned into.

It was if they had no idea that dragging a kid around police work wasn’t normal. Something that was a real possibility, actually. They’d never known any differently, after all, having never worked outside the Brave Police Department. Gunmax had been wholly unnerved when Yuuta had shown up inside the damn Tokyo Waste Processing Plant. The kid had _no_ instinct for self-preservation! Gunmax’s attempt to leave the boy behind certainly had been met with an inordinate amount of indignation, anyway, and he hadn’t understood why until he’d seen Deckerd race into battle with Yuuta still inside him. It was commonly accepted that thrusting an unarmed, underage child into the middle of warring robots was okay, and it drove Gunmax half up the wall trying to make anyone else in the whole dang Deckerd Room understand why this _wasn’t right._

He’d decided not to raise the issue of giving that same child control over the Brave Up signal for all the team combiners. It wasn’t that Gunmax didn’t trust the Boss. It was more that Gunmax seemed to be the only one aware that, by refusing to give the mechas control over their more powerful forms, they’d been relegated to less than human. Gunmax was literally the only BP unit free to combine on his own, and that could be directly traced back to the Chief having a discussion with the Highway Patrol director back when Gunmax had first come online.

“Why would I need him to call me every time he needs to combine?” the man had said gruffly. “He’s supposed to be a regular Patrolman. I trust the judgment of my men.”

And that’d been the end of it. Gunmax could change to his Gunmax Armor mode anytime, because his boss at the time had decided that BP-601 had a right to make his own decisions, just like any cop on the job. Gunmax liked his new Boss, but…did none of the other Braves think it was kind of _strange_ that a human had to have control over them?

He admired Duke because the mecha’s professionalism reminded him of working in Highway Patrol, of being treated like a human Patrolman instead of some kind of robot freakshow attached to the police force. The easy banter felt good, too, as if it were a pressure valve on the irritation that built up every dang time the Commissioner hauled them out to handle special cases like that was all they were capable of doing. Like they weren’t human cops under the metal exteriors. Like they had to be controlled and contained.

Gunmax _liked_ Duke because the Knight frowned at him over his flagrant skirting of the rules but restrained himself to just chiding the green mecha. No matter how annoying Gunmax got, Duke always managed to convey the feeling that putting up with him was all part of the job. It was like working with Mr. Kirisaki again, only without -- yeah. Without all _that_. Having a coworker instead of a friend was just plain easier to deal with. 

But the British robot still managed to give as good as he got when he was in the right mood. The other BP units got riled and reacted badly to juvenile jibes, deeper emotional investment giving the words more potential to hurt them, but Duke responded in kind. It reminded Gunmax of the catcalls and harassment between he and the other rookie Patrolmen, insults flinging fast and furious back and forth across the Highway Patrol main office. With them, like with Duke, it wasn’t unprofessional or insulting. It was just ‘being one of the guys.’ 

The end result was that Gunmax respected Duke almost as much as he did McCrane, but he liked working with the British Knight more. He had more fun mocking McCrane than working together with him. Something about the three Build Team members who’d react even if McCrane didn’t, apparently. The Brit and the git got along on a different level than that, however. Their relationship was built on respect and professionalism under the steady back-and-forth of banter.

A lot of it had to do with mutual understanding. Duke, too, was a late arrival to the department. He shared Gunmax’s theory that the whole department was some kind of vortex of crazy. 

“Giant pandas don’t just _show up_ out of nowhere,” Gunmax groused as he checked his Magnum one last time before patrol, “but that’s exactly what happened. One day I’m out on my beat, and I get fifteen calls from Dispatch about drivers’ assistance emergencies down on the coast because they’re,” he gestured at Deckerd, who was sitting at his desk ignoring the green mecha’s well-worn bitching, “some sort of magnet for weird.”

Duke finished writing and put his pen down, nodding a bit in agreement. “I find it stranger that it turned about and left afterward.”

“Exactly!” There went the gestures again. Gunmax talked more with his hands than an Italian stereotype. “It shows up, causes havoc on half the highways, and _leaves_ like, whoa, **nice** country you got here but I’ve got an appointment to tear up Atlantis next, so **see you later** , thanks for the company!”

The surfeit of manic gestures got a concerned quirk of an eyebrow from Duke, but Deckerd just shook his head. The ranting was normal for Gunmax. The Build Team figured that it was jealousy for having missed out on the action, but Deckerd knew how defensive Gunmax got about the highway system in the city. A broken barrier or two was nothing to be concerned about, but whenever traffic got blocked by major road construction -- cue a plunge into griping. Any time a criminal messed up the roads, the Highway Patrolman took it personal. Maybe because he was still on call for Highway Patrol’s roster, which resulted in him never pulling routine patrol duty anymore. Instead, he got double shifts during the worst traffic jams and road conditions the city’s criminal element could cause. 

Duke blinked and shook his head, accepting the ranting for the moment. He got up and checked his own sidearm as he started toward the exit after his partner for today’s patrol. Gunmax was already leaning against the doorjamb waiting. “The Domingo Republic case is another one I must admit leaves me speechless,” the Knight commented. It was always good to start patrol with a decent topic of conversation. It made time pass so much faster when small talk about the weather petered out.

“ **God** , don’t remind me.” Gunmax looked up, appealing to the gods of sanity and fashion on high. “Dumpson still has his Luchadore mask somewhere, and I _know_ the Commissioner had too much fun designing those wrestling outfits.”

Duke snorted. He’d seen pictures. The case file was like a madcap storybook of horrible taste in clothing. As applied to robots, which made it even worse. Gunmax’s smirk indicated that he knew exactly what the Knight was thinking, and Duke shook his head as he followed the green mecha out the door. “Where were you during that case? I noticed that you weren’t amongst the wrestlers. How were you excused from the spandex plague?” 

Behind them, Deckerd suddenly looked up alertly as Gunmax’s devilish laughter rang like a harbinger of trouble down the hall. A moment later, the patrol car’s chair hit the floor.

Too late; the door had already closed, and Duke was mystified by the delighted smirk Gunmax turned over his shoulder as he locked it. The Motorcycle Detective retracted his wrist-hack and turned to face the Knight. He ignored the muffled thumping and what might have been a dismayed _‘Noooo’_ from the other side of the door. “What, nobody’s told you that story yet?”

Good Lord, he was almost sorry he’d asked. “What story?”

“ **Sir Knight** ,” Gunmax purred, catching him by one shoulder and pulling him down the hall toward the garage. Was it Duke’s imagination, or was the mecha deliberately bumping his hip against his? “I’m going to need Gunbike to tell this story right.”

…definitely sorry he’d asked. 

Yet as he watched Gunmax’s typically flamboyant gestures vividly bring this story to life, Duke found he wasn’t sorry at all. This was a story that needed more than bare words and a picture or two to properly illustrate it. No wonder he hadn’t been able to find the case file for this mission. It probably only existed somewhere in a locked drawer in a deep hole somewhere, if it existed at all. He couldn’t exactly imagine Chief Toudou writing a summary of how Gunbike had -- ahem. Yes. Gunmax had certainly been correct that she’d been required in order to…get the story straight.

All the facts correct. Presented in order, like Duke was a jury in court and Gunmax was a gleeful lawyer laying the case out before him in all its sinful glory. And, like a jury, Duke was very interested in how the case had unfolded, all the facts falling neatly into place. His interest was fortunate, as Gunmax seemed determined to make sure he conveyed them accurately and at great length. Using whatever props were at hand. 

That’d resulted in the best use of Fire Loader’s ladder Duke had ever seen, and a hands-on demonstration of just how a 5- meter-tall robot could give a lapdance. As a sample of the skills he’d picked up while working undercover, of course. 

It made Duke hope Gunmax was never actually called upon by the courts. A real jury probably wouldn’t tip him afterward, and a show like that sort of required it. It was only polite. 

**[* * * * *]**  
  
“Let Me Tell You” **by** [](http://shibara-ffnet.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://shibara-ffnet.livejournal.com/)**shibara_ffnet**  
 **[* * * * *]**

**[* * * * *]**  
 _Anyone up for an arm wrestling match?_  
 **[* * * * *]**

“Alright, ah…” Shadowmaru was not _nervous_. Ninjas didn’t do nervous. It was like baking. Ninjas didn’t do baking. Well, unless it was stealth cupcakes or something, but those were an exception because, well, they were cupcakes. And stealthy. Possibly topped with frosting decorations and covered in glitter. The decorations made them extra stealthy. The glitter was the source of their power -- okay, that was getting ridiculous. He was neither a baker nor nervous. He just wasn’t used to being a referee, especially in these kind of circumstances. 

“Rules.” He flicked a glance to Power Joe, but the Kung Fu Detective was standing there like a great block of useless. He seemed tied into a motionless knot of internal conflict, and Shadowmaru couldn’t really blame him. It must be tough standing between teammates like this, with Dumpson glowering from one side and McCrane glaring coolly from the other. Not that the ninja was nervous refereeing this match in his stead, of course. Because, well, cupcakes and stealth. Yeah. That was logical. 

Oh, ceiling ducts and damsels in distress, why wasn’t Deckerd back with Yuuta yet? No matter how this ended, no matter who won, the Build Team was going to be at each other’s throats. Yuuta needed to be here, or it was going to get ugly _real_ quick. It was already pretty bad. He’d never seen McCrane’s optic twitch like that, and Dumpson’s smoke stacks were puffing steadily.

So it fell to Shadowmaru, non-nervous not-baker referee extraordinary, to delay. Official citation of rules in boring detail was a go, captain! 

“Elbows must remain on the table at all times,” he started calmly, smiling just slightly at the two women on either side of the table. The brunette and the redhead grasped hands and exchanged determined nods as Dumpson and McCrane hovered protectively over them, and Shadowmaru really hoped Deckerd was on his way.

**[* * * * *]**

**[A/N:** _Starting a new set of prompts, because I felt the need for some cute in my life. And because Shibara drew a picture without a story, and that couldn’t be allowed to stand. _Edited to add a large chunk of characterization to the first part. Until the curtain rises next time, m’dears._ _**]**


	6. Pt. 6

**Title:** Directionally Challenged, Pt. 6  
**Warnings:** Random prompts create random ficlets. These jump around between different episodes.  
**Rating:** PG  
**Continuity:** Brave Police J-Decker  
**Characters:** All of ‘em.  
**Disclaimer:** The theatre doesn’t own the script or actors.  
**Motivation (Prompt):** All credit goes to Chibiveneficus, who got me to write all four prompts. Thank you!

**[* * * * *]  
Giant Rolling Chairs  
[* * * * *]**

The original designs for the Decker Room were, quite frankly, mechanical. Whoever had submitted the designs to the Police committee for the room had apparently gone wholesale into the idea of efficiency over comfort. Which would have been fine if the BP-units had remained machines to the core of their beings.

Yuuta had put an end to that, however, and the mechanical policemen had human hearts to go with their metal bodies. That did give them certain preferences that hadn’t been planned for. The garage area for J-Roader and the Build Team's auxiliary tool lockup was fine, and the shooting range was functional. Chief Toudou's area with their repair cradles had obviously been designed for the mechanics who staffed it, but Toudou had very strong ideas of how his workspaces should be laid out. His creations had inherited those preferences, and the current design just wasn't cutting it for them.

“It’s a box,” Dumpson said flatly.

Deckerd looked at the design and sighed. “It is, rather.” He hoped that the design team hadn’t intended insult by handing over blueprints for a glorified garage. A garage with tables slapped together from sheet metal and chairs that looked uncomfortable even in the blueprint phase. 

“We’re sitting in one long row facing the wall,” Power Joe complained as he spread the papers out. One finger traced the offending area. “How are we supposed to talk to each other? It’s like a lunch counter, not a desk!” His brow creased, picturing it. Any time one of them needed to speak to someone who wasn't sitting on either side, they'd have to get up and walk around or try to hold a conversation through someone's workspace. Maybe that would work for machines silently slogging through files, but not for Power Joe!

“Where’s Yuuta’s desk?” Of course Deckerd would think of that first. The Build Team frowned as one, and papers rustled as they searched for where their Boss was supposed to sit.

“Found it.” Dumpson’s voice went even flatter. “He has an office.”

The others crowded around him and peered at down in various shades of concerned. They studied the separate design for Yuuta’s office, and none of them looked happy with what they saw. It looked nice enough but too large for such a small boy. More importantly, it cut them off from their Boss. They didn’t even have to say anything; the four mecha exchanged a glance that encompassed just how little they liked that idea. 

Deckerd wasn’t the only one who depended on Yuuta for moral support. Sometimes for more than that. They were all still figuring out humans and themselves, and there were some things that it took a child’s perspective to break down into understandable parts. Chief Toudou couldn’t explain to them why being intentionally cut off in traffic by one of the regular patrol cars hurt Deckerd’s feelings. Objectively, the chief engineer knew it was an emotional reaction, but he’d had years to build up responses that he’d long since forgotten the initial root causes for. Yuuta, on the other hand, knew what it was like to be snubbed by the other kids in class, and he was still figuring out how he should react day by day. The boy _understood_ in a way that the BP-units needed.

Sticking Yuuta behind a closed door seemed like a Bad Idea.

Especially since the office was in a weird location. “He’s going to be looking up at us all the time,” McCrane said. “I don’t like the idea of continually looking down at our boss, much less any other officers who come in. Also, the risk of an accident is increased by putting the door from the rest of Police Headquarters here.” He pointed at the human-sized door on the far end of the Decker Room blueprint. It was beside the mecha-sized door, meaning that humans would have to enter the building from the outside and go down the hallway from Chief Toudou's garage to the Decker Room. “We might not see it open or be able to keep track of anyone who comes through.” They were so large in comparison to humans that one accident could be the last for any human unfortunate enough to be involved.

“True…it's a long way to walk, too. Yuuta would have to go through the door next to the Chief's office to get into the main building.” Deckerd traced the route out, calculating how long it would take to walk there and back again. 

“I don’t like it.” With that, Dumpson shoved the whole stack of papers aside. “Why do we have to work on building that? I won’t be able to work _in_ it once we’re finished, so why bother? Tell me you could work in this!” he challenged when McCrane started to object, and the other mecha looked away uncomfortably. “Didn’t think so.”

It still felt wrong to disobey orders, but that feeling made sense. Orders were orders. The BP-units knew why they felt bad over disobeying those. Disagreeing with a decision made by their not-quite-superiors in the form of the department head committee wasn't quite the same feeling. It made them uneasy because they weren’t sure they were allowed to have opinions. 

Okay, well, theoretically they knew they were _allowed_ to have opinions. They didn’t know whether or not they could do anything about it. A machine could be ordered to agree. Humans, or mecha with humans hearts, could not be. They didn't know what humans did when they had opinions. They felt a bit like they would get in trouble any minute now for daring to not like the designs.

“Phoooo.” Power Joe blew out a long breath and slumped forward over the sawhorse table they were currently using in place of the desks they were supposed to be building. Except the thing in the blueprint wasn’t really a desk. At least with the sawhorse table they could gather around it and talk face-to-face with each other. “What should we do?”

Deckerd shifted from foot to foot. The Build Team had automatically turned to him for the answer, and didn’t know what to say. He didn't want them to get in trouble, but the Decker Room in the blueprints wouldn't be useable.

The only example he had to follow was Yuuta's. He gave it some thought and slowly started, “When Yuuta’s sisters tell him to do something he doesn’t want to do, he only does what they _say_ to do. Maybe we could do the same thing.”

“Follow the letter of the law instead of the spirit?” Dumpson’s face twisted in distaste, but he subsided after a minute of thought. He was coming to find that there were gray areas where he’d originally believed laws carved out black and white. That was a hard reality for his Super A.I. to come to terms with.

“We...could.” McCrane pushed the papers flat again, studying them more thoughtfully. “Commissioner Saejima’s orders were to build the Decker Room.” A smile spread gradually across his face in a little hint of excitement. “He gave us permission to modify the designs as needed to fit our specifications. I believe he was referring to our vehicle modes, but -- “

“Woohoo!” Power Joe pumped his fist in the air. “We can work with that!”

Deckerd’s smile was even wider. “My specifications include having drawers in my desk for paperwork. It’s very inconvenient having to search for the form I need whenever the door lets a breeze in. And no wall between Yuuta’s office and my desk would be nice.” Maybe normal police officers preferred privacy over comradie, but Deckerd didn’t feel secure unless his friend was within sight. It was bad enough that Yuuta was at school most of every weekday.

No matter how many laws he came preprogrammed to enforce or the gun he carried, sometimes Deckerd felt every day his age. Clinging to Yuuta gave him someone to put on a brave front for. 

“Drawers...no walls...perhaps a platform of some kind for Yuuta’s desk? Eye level to us when we're sitting would be a good compromise between our relative heights.” McCrane had a pencil out and was sketching quickly on the back of one of the blueprints. “Although having to climb up and down steps all the time might be tiresome.”

“He could probably use the exercise!” Power Joe laughed and flopped onto the wobbly stool he’d tacked together from scrap metal. The other Brave Police were all standing. “But yeah, he’s just a kid. He’d have to carry all his stuff up and down the steps.”

“Why does the door have to be at floor level? Move it to the other side of the room and put it up on the platform behind the desk.” Dumpson paged through the papers until he found Police Headquarter’s main building among the blueprints. He pointed at the exterior wall where the Brave Police Department would be added on. “There’s space here to put in a door on the second floor, and that way we can connect the electrical system underneath the platform instead of adding more height and dropping the ceilings. We’ll still have to put air ducts in, but I’d rather have a computer server and back-up generator for ourselves.” 

“Having one desk would take up most of the room,” McCrane mused as he sketched. “Anyone have objections to multiple desks?” He calculated the best routes from the door to the outside hallway, to the newly sketched human platform area. “One main desk area with room for all four of us to sit at to talk or work together, and two paired desks -- side-by-side or face-to-face?”

“Face-to-face,” Dumpson and Deckerd said at the same time.

“Can you switch this?” Deckerd said after a minute of watching McCrane draw. He put his fingers on the desks and flipped his hand, indicating where he wanted the paired desk to be instead of the largest group work area. “Having the larger desk in the way would make it harder for all of us to gather close to the platform if we need to see something.”

“It'd be wise to shift the projection screen from the far wall to up on the platform, then.” McCrane sketched it in and regarded the change thoughtfully. “That does put us further away from Yuuta’s desk.”

“I can sit at the smaller desk when we’re not all working together.” Secretly, he liked the idea of having Yuuta all to himself. The Build Team would be nearby, but not _quite_ as close.

The separation appealed to them in a different way, it seemed. Team solidarity for the win. “Build Team desk only!” Power Joe cheered. “Go sit at your own desk, patrol car!”

As if in revenge for the comment, the rickety makeshift stool collapsed under him.

The other BP-units raised their brows at the pile of Power Joe on the floor. “Chairs,” McCrane said.

“Chairs,” Dumpson agreed.

A demanding finger waved in the air. “I want wheels!” The finger went back down to help Power Joe pick himself up again. “One of those rolling chairs the other officers get!”

Dumpson frowned, trying to picture wheeled chairs in the context of the Decker Room. “You’re being childish.”

“Hey, hear me out!” The Kung Fu Detective pushed himself upright ready to argue his point. “Say you see a paper you need across the room. You’d have to push your chair back, get up, walk over, walk back, sit down, and scoot back in. A wheeled chair, you wouldn’t have to do that!”

His teammate scoffed. “You’re lazy!”

“He has a point,” McCrane said almost reluctantly. He pointed at the new floorplan when Dumpson scowled at him. “We’re going to be sitting around the same desk. If I want you to see something on my computer screen, it’s going to be easier if you can just push out and to the side closer to me. And if we need to turn to listen to Yuuta or if, say, the Commissioner walks in, those wheeled chairs typically turn on their axis as well. We could turn to face them at eye level without standing up and looming over the desk.”

Oh. Dumpson could see the point of that now as he looked at the room set-up. At least two of the desks would put their backs to the platform Yuuta’s desk was on. 

Still, it seemed like a frivolous thing. “We don’t need cushions and wheels,” he groused, folding his arms as he protested. “We’re not human.”

McCrane went very still and Power Joe’s exuberance damped like a switch had been thrown. Deckerd just turned his head and smiled. “Aren’t we?” There were clanks as multiple pairs of feet shifted. “We’re policemen, whatever else we are. Don’t we have the right to small comforts?”

Dumpson looked away. He didn’t know how to answer that.

“I don’t want to bother Chief Toudou every time I get a scratch from sitting down too fast,” McCrane said quietly. “I can’t see the harm in padding the chairs.”

“They’re just _chairs_ ,” Power Joe objected, pushing at air with his hands as if to shove Dumpson’s words aside. “It’s not like we’re going to hold races in the hall with them!” He might have been thinking about it, but now he’d never admit it. “Think of it this way: the floor’s going to be scraped up in a few weeks if we have to keep screeching chairs across it. A few rubber car tires will stop the noise _and_ the marks!”

McCrane immediately frowned, running that through his Super A.I. “We’ll have to make reinforced axis for each chair, considering our weight, and the tires will leave rubber marks.” He knew Power Joe. Eventually, the Kung Fu Detective would try something ill-advised, and there would be office chaos on wheels.

“So we take turns with a mop and a bucket. Skidmarks clean up. Scratches?” Power Joe shrugged. “We’d have to sand the floor down and polish it flat again.” 

“Do we have a janitorial supplies budget?” Dumpson asked, deciding to let his frustrations simmer for a while. He wasn't sure why he was protesting, just that he felt he sort of had to.

“We should,” Deckerd said, digging into the paperwork pile again. “They can’t expect us to not clean our workspace.”

“Cement floors,” McCrane muttered. “They wanted us to have cement floors. It really was a garage.” He made a note to start testing the weight limit of ceramic tiles versus sheet metal.

In the end, they did design and build rolling chairs. Possibly because Power Joe wouldn’t stop whining about it, but also because his arguments were valid. 

And he may have spun around in circles on his until he got dizzy and fell off, but only when nobody else was in the Decker Room. He had a tiny smidgeon of dignity, after all.

Dumpson was the one Azuma caught attempting to surf a chair across the room. The Vice-Commissioner had a bit of a fit when he opened the door to see that. To be fair, Commissioner Saejima was giving Dumpson pointers on how to steer at the time. That might have been part of why Azuma sputtered so badly.

The Brave Police decided not to invite him to the First Annual Office Chair Race, especially when Gunmax and Deckerd made rope harnesses for a chariot round. That might have been pushing the bounds of reasonable interpretation of that ‘modify the designs as needed to fit specifications’ argument.

**[* * * * *]  
Dumpson - "Shake Weights  
[* * * * *]**

Somebody over in the design department had an odd sense of humor.

The original Build Team stood around their desk looking down at the newest set of dumbbell weights for Dumpson, and they were confused. Slightly amused, in the case of Power Joe, but mostly confused.

“I swear I’ve seen these somewhere,” Power Joe said, turning to throw himself into his chair. Little known fact: Power Joe spent so much time watching soap operas because he was some kind of paperwork wizard. McCrane tended to hand him any Internet research that needed to be done, because it was guaranteed that any work handed to him ten minutes before _’Passion Play’_ came on would be finished in those ten minutes.

So when he bent to searching for where he’d seen these odd dumbbells before, everyone could rest assured that he’d find it.

Meanwhile, their resident weapons specialist stepped up to the plate. McCrane reached into the box and gingerly took out the set.

They were smooth. That was the most obvious difference they’d noticed when the box had been delivered. Dumpson’s dumbbells, like Drill Boy’s soccer balls, doubled as weapons. They were a little goofy on the surface -- weights with spikes? Seriously? -- but they served a functional purpose. 

The most advanced sport studies done to date had been applied in Drill Boy's creation, the data from those studies going into the mechanics and programming of the machine. Drill Boy had resulted. He had a playful team personality and deadly accurate aim derived from the sports studies, and staying with a soccer motif made him that much less threatening to the city populace. It gave him a chasing compulsion and need to play, but that was a small price to pay. His soccer balls seemed whimsical only on the surface. Criminals certainly didn't see the whimsy.

Dumpson’s fighting style, on the other hand, called for an immensely dense internal structure and intimidatingly bulky exterior. His dumbbells were large and spiked, and they looked silly until they became the extensions of his fists that they were. It’d been a challenge for Chief Toudou to tone Dumpson's appearance down into a mecha who wouldn’t scare children. He was already a strict, rule-abiding policeman, and Saejima and Toudou had been worried that Dumpson would be seen more as the boogeyman than an officer there to serve and protect.

So they’d built in a grappler’s need to touch. They couldn’t make Dumpson _look_ any less intimidating, but his tough persona faltered when it came to tactile contact. Just ask Ayako. She put a hand on his hand, and he turned to mush. Hand him a kitten, and Dumpson’s rough-hewn personality melted into gruff attempts to cover just how tenderly he’d hold it. Of all of them, he was the one who visited the Art Museum regularly and could truly appreciate a painting for the artist's message. 

Dumpson’s hard shell covered a Super A.I. that relied so heavily on affectionate physical contact and the unseen bonds of friendship that his armor could be made of tissue paper under the right circumstances. 

He was also the one who _had_ to touch. Ayako had never questioned why Dumpson insisted on carrying her so often, or why his doors remained unlocked even knowing she’d jump on the chance to scramble inside him. She just accepted the hand always held down to her as a natural part of who Dumpson was. 

The five meter tall Wrestling Detective famous for grappling hand-to-hand with criminal mecha, and a slender, fragile human woman sat in his arms without the slightest concern? Chief Toudou had designed something right, there.

The other Build Team members were used to how Dumpson constantly sought contact. The other BP-units had adjusted as well. He greeted the Braves with light punches to the shoulders out in the field, or knocking his shoulder companionably against theirs. In the mornings, he said good morning with fist bumps for Shadowmaru, a smack to the back of the head for Drill Boy, an arm around the shoulders for McCrane, and a mock fight against Power Joe. Deckerd usually came in later than the rest of them, but he’d learned to detour around the Build Team’s desk to rest a hand on Dumpson’s shoulder before sitting down at his own desk.

Gunmax almost hissed defensively whenever Dumpson got close. Do Not Touch the Gunmax. Which was bizarre, because Gunmax casually violated everyone’s personal space bubbles when he felt like it. Yet should Dumpson so much as dig an elbow into the mecha’s side, and suddenly Gunmax stalked from the room in an offended huff that could only be soothed by Gunbike and macho posing.

Fortunately, Dumpson had an outlet for his need to touch. He didn’t weight lift just to keep ultra-dense cabling limber. His joints stiffened if they weren’t tested at their intended weight capacity every once and a while, but the dumbbells also kept his hands occupied. They gave him something to do when what he really wanted was to reach out and feel life under his fingertips. 

Saejima and Toudou had made the Wrestling Detective an intensely physical mecha. He had to do _something_ with himself when he wasn’t grappling with Power Joe and Drill Boy.

This...really wasn’t what the Commissioner and Chief had in mind. Power Joe hoped, anyway. “Guys…”

He looked up from his computer and blinked, stalling out. 

“The weight shift feels right,” McCrane was saying as he held a dumbbell up and squinted down it like he would his shotgun. “It doesn’t have the makeup of a gun, but here.” He handed Dumpson his shotgun and shook the dumbbell sharply in illustration. “Pump it. Doesn’t it feel similar?”

Dumpson held the shotgun in one hand and jerked so that the gun pumped itself. At the same time, he gave the same jerk to the weight he held in his other hand. The dumbbell went up and down in an eerily similar way. “I don’t want my weights to be guns,” he said as he set the shotgun down and went back to examining the dumbbell. “I use them to punch with. What happens if it discharges while pointed the wrong way?”

Power Joe choked.

McCrane gave him an odd look but kept turning the dumbbell over in his hands. “I don’t think it’s a gun. It just has a similar weight shift to it. I wonder why?”

“Wonder why what?” Drill Boy bounced through the door and right into the conversation. Shadowmaru and Deckerd followed at a more sedate pace, but they paused to listen, too. 

Dumpson held out the dumbbells with a helpless shrug. “My new set is going to take some getting used to. I guess the Chief thinks I need more fine motor control or something.”

“McCrane!” Hissing quietly, trying not to laugh, Power Joe beckoned his teammate over as the other BP-units passed the Shake Weights around. This was becoming absurd. He had to tell them before it got out of control! “McCrane, come look at this!”

Keeping the volume low, he set the official commercial to play. McCrane bent attentively over him to watch. The official commercial made sense in an innocent way, but the parodies were queued up ready to destroy that innocence.

Meanwhile, the other Brave Police were poking and prodding the new weights curiously. “I’m not sure how useful they’ll be in combat,” Dumpson said. He eyed Drill Boy critically as his younger teammate jigged with the dumbbell. “You don’t have to jump and down. You can just move your hands.”

“It’s more fun this way!” Drill Boy exaggerated the weight shift and fell against the wrestler, who sighed and popped the back of his head with a hand affectionately. “I feel strong. If I pump these long enough, will I get stronger than you?” The littlest BP-unit struck a silly muscleman pose, chest puffed up and arms bent around nonexistent muscles. “I'll pound iron, and then I'll be able to take you all on at once!”

Power Joe made a small fizzling noise, optics wide.

Dumpson didn’t notice, too busy laughing. “That’s not how metal works!”

“Aww, c’mon, what else are these meant to do if not build muscle?”

“I think they’re meant to build a skill.” Deckerd smiled, looking mildly entertained by the concentration required to keep the dumbbell in constant, controlled motion. “The weight shift does make them harder to handle. Maybe they’re not meant for combat at all?” Power Joe’s fizzling got louder.

A muzzle abruptly nudged into Deckerd’s hands and stole the dumbbell. “Let’s see.” Shadowmaru gave the thing a good shake and promptly fell over as all the weight relocated to one side and swung him right off his feet. All four legs flailing, the mechanical dog flipped back over and lay there, forefeet splayed in startlement. “Well, that was unexpected.”

“Careful,” Dumpson warned in a smug drawl. “They’re just as heavy as my other set.”

“I noticed, Master Dumpson,” Shadowmaru said dryly. The wrestler had been made to lift more than any of the other BP-units. Sometimes it was really obvious how he out-classed the rest of them in sheer strength. “Hmm.” Lifting it more carefully in his mouth, he rose and padded over to the red mecha. “Throw it for me.”

“You sure?” Even as he asked, Dumpson was walking toward the door to the hall. 

“I want to try something.” Deckerd and Drill Boy stayed at the desk with their dumbbell, but Shadowmaru jogged out into the hallway. Behind him, McCrane’s optics suddenly went wide as the second commercial came on, and Power Joe began to laugh hysterically. Shadowmaru glanced back but let the door close. “Just a toss, my friend.” 

One eyebrow raised skeptically, but Dumpson gave the dumbbell a gentle underhand toss down the hall. Shadowmaru leapt up to catch it mid-air, letting the shifting weight whip him around into a spin that continued as he landed. He ended up facing Dumpson again, feet braced as the weight rocked him the other direction.

“Huh.”

“Indeed. I’m not sure how applicable it could be to combat, but it certainly makes playing catch more interesting.” The mechanical dog sat back on his haunches and tipped his head back and forth to feel the weight shift. “What a strange thing.”

“What strange thing?” Gunmax walked around the corner and sidestepped smartly around the dog in his way as if he’d known Shadowmaru was there. “New toy, **doggie**?”

“New toy for me,” Dumpson said, kneeling as the dog loped after Gunmax. One hand took the dumbbell back while the other tussled Shadowmaru’s stiff audios. “We’re trying to figure them out.”

“What’s to figure out about -- “ Gunmax stopped dead in the doorway.

Inside the Decker Room, McCrane and Power Joe were holding an urgent conversation in whispers. McCrane looked horrified, but Power Joe looked like he wanted to fall off his chair laughing. Drill Boy was watching them curiously. Deckerd had turned to face the door when it opened, working the Shake Weight in both hands. His optics lit up at the sight of Gunmax staring at him. 

The Motorcycle Detective turned on his heel and left a little more quickly than he’d arrived.

**[* * * * *]  
Drill Boy - "Burrowing"  
[* * * * *]**

He had no idea how to cover it up.

That was worse than actually creating a hole in the first place. Drill Boy anxiously glanced around, hoping that nobody was heading toward the Decker Room right now, because there was a _giant gaping hole_ in the hallway floor that he couldn’t explain. Er, well, he could explain it, he just didn’t want to. Some mecha drew their sidearm when surprised. Some threw a punch. Drill Boy apparently burrowed.

It made sense because of his Hyper Drill, but that didn’t make it any less embarrassing.

“Shoo,” he whispered to the bird that’d scared him. The last thing he’d expected indoors was a flurry of wings right in the face. He might have panicked. A bit. A lot. He’d sort of, maybe, transformed and drilled away as fast as he could in blind fear.

Just thinking about it was making him flustered in self-conscious embarrassment. He would _never_ live it down if Power Joe found out about this!

He waved his hands at the bird. “Shoo, go away. Go back outside.” The bird chirped in distress and continued fluttering against the ceiling as if escape could be found there.

Escape could be found in the floor, at least if the bird wanted to fly down a short dark underground tunnel out to the park area outside Police Headquarters. He hadn’t expected a burst of feathers and fear while walking down the hall, okay? The bird had looked much bigger up close and personal! For all he’d known, the underground insect-men awakening had instigated a bird uprising. Very dangerous, birds! They could -- could -- they could probably peck at him. Scratch at his windows. Poop on him.

Ewwww.

Regardless, Drill now had a series of problems to deal with. He’d already taken care of one by piling all the evacuated dirt back in his exit hole, tamping it down with a brief wild dance -- passing cars had honked at him, he hoped because of the happy children he’d waved at as he did his boogie -- and moving the picnic table to sit on top of it. It wasn’t a perfect cover, but it was better than the splintered flooring he currently stood in front of. There were no mecha-sized picnic tables handy, here!

More important yet, however, was the bird who had started all of this. The hole could wait; birds weren’t meant to be indoors. He had to do something about the poor thing before it injured itself, or summoned reinforcements. Either one would be bad, and then he’d have to explain his involvement to the rest of the Build Team and/or fight off a feathered rebellion.

“Shoo,” Drill Boy urged. Raising his hands into position to catch the little animal, he edged down the hallway, trying to anticipate which way the bird would dodge. Exhausted by fear, the bird perched on a light fixture and sat there, throat vibrating as it panted heavily. That didn’t look healthy. Drill Boy stopped and poofed his cheeks out as he watched it worriedly. “Alright, bird. Alright. You just sit there and rest while I, um, get something.”

He tried to think of something he could use to catch the little thing. The Boss’s coffee cup? No, too small. An empty oil can? No, wait, petroleum products were pretty toxic to wildlife. He’d ask one of the regular police officers for help, but they were all kind of short and the ceilings here were all very tall in comparison. Besides, they’d probably tattle to Mr. Azuma. That’d almost be worse than Power Joe finding out about this.

Oh, hey. He knew what he could use! 

“Wait right there,” he ordered the bird. Not that it’d listen, but it seemed fairly tuckered out. Drill Boy turned on his heel and jumped over the hole to race into the Decker Room and over to his desk. He grabbed the first piece of paper he found. Biting his lower lip and squinting one optic, he painstakingly folded it diagonally, then folded the triangle again. Peeling one layer away from the base of the new triangle gave him a flimsy paper cup. 

He held it up triumphantly and grinned. “Okay! Perfect!” Paper was thinner and softer than porcelain, so it was better than a coffee cup. Bigger, too.

“Bird?” Drill Boy asked as he stuck his head out of the Decker Room. He took a quick glance up and down the hallway -- no Power Joe, so he was safe for the moment -- before searching the ceiling for the wayward bird. “Bird, where a~re you?”

Voice in a low, hopefully reassuring croon, he inched down the hall toward the light fixture. Nothing? Where had it gone? He really hoped it’d found its way outside, because all he could think of all of a sudden was a dead, starved bird on the floor someday soon. That would be horrible. The Boss would cry. McCrane would get that severe look and walk around looking like he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. Dumpson would bluster a lot because Deckerd would be busy comforting Yuuta, and Power Joe would be trying to help McCrane feel better, and it’d be _all his fault_ , and --

He realized he’d crumpled the paper cup up in his hands. “Oops, a-heh.” The youngest BP-unit was just slightly nervous right now. Almost worse than a potential dead animal was the threat of Power Joe laughing hysterically. It ramped up the longer this went on, because that hole in the floor was _still there_ , and it wasn’t getting any smaller! He had to do something about it. What, he didn’t know. Just, um, something.

Maybe there was a table in the storage room that he could haul out into the hallway. He wasn’t sure how he’d explain why there was suddenly a table in the middle of the hallway, but he’d think of something.

Super A.I. whirring busily over the problem, Drill Boy turned to head toward the storage room.

And stumbled back as the bird erupted with a terrified squawk right from underneath his foot.

“ **Waaaaaaaaaaaah!** ”

Now there were two holes in the floor he had to explain.

**[* * * * *]  
Deckerd - "Responsible gun care"  
[* * * * *]**

Deckerd was a conscientious policeman. He inquired after the well-being of all his mecha before, during, and after a case. He spoke with Chief Toudou about proposed minor upgrades to their machine parts, and wrote long, meticulously researched proposals of his own under Commissioner Saejima’s guidance. Usually, he proposed the Police Department increase funding for ammunition, the engineering department, and training regime. The criminal underground never ceased upgrading their mecha, after all, and the Brave Police had to be ready to meet any new innovations facing them out in the field.

Outside of what duty required, and under Yuuta’s tutelage, Deckerd also put in numerous proposals for things like vacation time, post-combat counseling, hazardous duty pay, and an office fund for miscellaneous items. It’d taken him some time to get used to the idea that the Brave Police should have those.

“We don’t need vacation time,” he’d objected the first time Yuuta ran in triumphantly waving the department’s vacation form.

“Yes you do,” Yuuta had said. The boy dropped the form on his desk and started digging in a drawer for a pen. “You’re one of the police, right? Policemen get time off. We’re going to start the ball rolling for visiting my parents next year!”

That’d stopped the Brave Detective in his tracks, with his mouth still open and everything. His Super A.I. went _‘but’_ a few times and circled back around as no real objection could be found. He was built to serve and protect, but one of the Commissioner’s stated goals was to integrate the Brave Police into the wider police force. Yuuta’s goal, so far as Deckerd’s A.I. could objectively assess anything the boy did as a goal, was to help his friends.

He doubted Yuuta ever thought about it in terms of lobbying for the rest of the police force to treat his friends like human beings. In Yuuta’s eyes, that’s exactly what they were. It was his assumption that everyone else saw right through the giant metal bodies to the human souls, too.

Deckerd had no idea how to gently break it to his best friend that the requested vacation time would be turned down because the department heads regarded the Brave Police as property. Which was painful to think, but also exceedingly awkward to put into words because of all the evidence _against_ that mindset.

Somewhere in the back of his head, the mecha behind the Brave Detective started laughing, because if it was awkward for him to say, how much more tongue-tied would the department heads be? He wanted to be a fly on the wall when the committee started throwing around the reasons against giving the mecha vacation time. The excuses were bound to be creative.

Commissioner Saejima just smiled and winked over the boy’s head at Deckerd when the forms were completed. “Don’t get your hopes up, Yuuta. They’re still on their probationary period,” he explained to the boy and somewhat nervous mechanical shadow. “New hires to the force go through a consideration period where they are trained and settle into their jobs. Deckerd here has fourteen more months before he’ll go through the final job evaluation.” His mouth twitched in a repressed smile. “It’s when Chief Toudou and I intend to propose what your final salary should be.”

“We get paid?” Deckerd asked, surprised. Yuuta rolled his eyes up at him, and he sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck. “I know. Policemen are paid. I just didn’t think…” He trailed off, a little unhappy at his own train of thought. “We’re BP-units,” he finished, a bit lame of an explanation but unfortunately all the explanation needed. If the Brave Police were somehow a TV show, only the humans would be listed as ‘characters.’ The mecha would get a separate category underneath them and never be included, no matter how hard they fought to be seen as human inside.

“You didn’t think you got paid because we built you?” Saejima asked shrewdly, sharp eyes seeing the slight slump of his shoulders.

“That’s not fair -- “ Yuuta started, but the man held out a hand to stop him.

“It’s not, but it is. Nanamagari City spent a large chunk of money on building the Brave Police,” he told city’s youngest employee. “The department committee decided, based on arguments raised by Chief Toudou, Colonel Onoue, and myself, that each of the Brave Police would receive a salary similar to those of our regular detectives. However,” Yuuta’s bright smile faded as soon as it grew, “Vice-Commissioner Azuma funnels those salaries directly into a debt-reduction program similar to those of our officers who attend the advanced Police Academy courses on the Department’s bill. Every hour on the clock pays down that initial building cost in the same way our officers pay down their education loans.”

Deckerd blinked and wanted to say something, but he wasn’t sure what. On the one hand, especially phrased in terms of continued education, he could see the logic in paying back the city for its investment in the new officers. On the other hand, numbers flashed down the side of his vision as he rapidly calculated what he knew of his framework costs. “We will be working a long time,” he said, dismayed.

The man chuckled and waved the paper in his hand as if to dismiss his concerns. “Less than you think. You yourself owe less than the initial start-up costs might indicate. Given that building you required the most effort in structure design and engineering work, the costs have been averaged between all of the Brave Police because the equipment didn’t have to be manufactured for the rest of them. As for paying it down, I believe the Build Team pulls an additional city maintenance pay fee whenever they assist in rebuilding the city after an attack, and Shadowmaru -- “ Saejima paused and continued in a more somber tone. “I haven’t spoken to him about it, but I managed to convince the committee that he should continue to draw Kagerou’s salary as well as his own until the end of what would have been their probationary period. If all had gone according to plan, that would have been the point that Kagerou, reprogrammed and trained to be a complete individual on his own, would have transferred from the Police program to the military.”

Yuuta’s eyes widened before softening into sympathy. “I’m glad.”

“It seemed the least we could do considering the fall-out from the BP-500 project.” The mechanical details had been handled well enough, but everyone involved in the BP project had been given a reminder that the mecha they worked on were more than just machines. The Commissioner had pushed the bereavement clause for Shadowmaru’s salary hard on the tail of that reminder.

“I’m glad,” Yuuta repeated. “Thank you.” His simple understanding successfully reduced Saejima to uncomfortably shifting from foot to foot. Being looked at like a hero did that to some men. Azuma went from zero to flustered in four seconds those rare times he spoke up for the Brave Police during meetings. Behold the power of Yuuta’s admiration.

Deckerd straightened to attention and saluted the man, adding his own thanks. “On Shadowmaru’s behalf, I’m grateful for the effort you put into,” fighting for their right to exist as sentient beings, “dealing with the bureaucracy of headquarters. If possible, I’d sincerely appreciate the opportunity to go over our debt if a spreadsheet can be forwarded to me. I know McCrane would be interested.”

Unspoken was his learned suspicion of Azuma’s motives. Vice-Commissioner Azuma didn’t do helpful. He didn’t like the BP-units. Deckerd wanted McCrane to work his paperwork magic and find out what the real story was. He figured that the man was intent on undermining their status within the police force by later pointing out that they weren’t even on payroll, but Deckerd would give him the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise.

But while McCrane did dig out some odd discrepancies in what expenses Vice-Commissioner Azuma had included in the debt list (the breakroom vending machine? Really? They were paying off the mechanics’ _coffee?_ ), most of the Brave Police Department’s salaries went to paying off reasonable debt. The Vice-Commissioner did his job, it seemed, even when he didn’t like who he did it for.

Yuuta had some trouble grasping all the math involved, but he fastened on another aspect of McCrane’s explanation of the spreadsheet. “You don’t get anything? Nothing at all? That’s not right.” He frowned fiercely, folding his arms and slouching in his seat as he thought. “It doesn’t make sense. A policeman can’t live off of nothing, so how’s it work for regular officers? Do they live in dorms until they pay off their debts? They can’t be living here. I think I’ve seen everything around here.” Saejima had taken him on a tour of the Police Headquarters when he’d joined the Brave Police. He’d even seen the weapons lock-up and firing range, where a very kind officer had shown him a sidearm and given him a lecture on gun safety. He’d taken it very seriously and repeated it word-for-word to Deckerd afterward. “They have to be getting some of the money to live on. I mean, how else can they buy food?” His sister got a monthly stipend from their parents’ bank account to pay for household expenses. Maybe police officers got something similar?

“We don’t have living expenses like humans do.” Dumpson leaned back in his own chair, crossing his arms much like Yuuta had. He huffed and flung out a hand to offer, “Maybe they don’t get us any money because the city pays for our gas and maintenance fees.”

“But that’s not fair!” Power Joe had been pacing as McCrane explained the payment plan, and now he threw his hands up in the air. “Nobody asked us if we wanted the money for anything!” For more cute dashboard ornaments, he meant, but his pout turned into something more pensive the more he thought about it. There were things he’d always wanted to buy but didn’t feel like he should ask the Boss for. Dashboard decorations, posters, candy for his friends, or even a better screen to watch his soaps on would have been nice. “I was okay with not getting paid, but now it’s bugging me. They should have at least asked if we wanted to buy stuff for ourselves!” 

“The Boss didn’t ask them before giving Deckerd a heart,” McCrane said wryly, nodding to their leader and the boy behind the desk. Yuuta was frowning at the spreadsheet. Expenses were difficult for a fourth grader to calculate, but he was trying. “I, for one, am grateful that we can pay the city back for building us.” Not that he didn’t want some spending money for, perhaps, a few flowers or a box of bon-bons for a certain colonel, but it was hard to muster any resentment when the BP-units owed Nanamagari City so much.

“The Brave Police pay their debts,” Shadowmaru finally spoke from where he’d been sitting alone at his desk. Two fingers slowly traced around his copy of the spreadsheet highlighting just how much he personally owed -- and how it was being paid back. There were two columns for salary on that paper, but only one mecha. “Money is hardly a concern for a proper officer. Our leaders do take care of us.” 

His smile was more strained than usual, but the biting double meaning wasn’t directed at the boy sitting at the desk. No, it was meant for those who manipulated the BP-units without care for their humanity. 

Yuuta still went into the regular police officers’ breakroom and put a cardboard box labeled “BP Carwash Fund” on the table. The boy didn’t say anything to the policemen who curiously watched him invade their kitchenette. He just smiled, dropped his allowance in, and walked away.

After that, the box always had enough in it that he could take everyone to the car wash every other week. He didn’t tell them where he got the money, and other than a worried look from Deckerd, nobody pressed him on it. Now that they knew to be, they were just grateful they got something that wasn’t job-related. Any money was more money than they had on their own. 

It still wasn’t enough to buy Power Joe umpteen sheets of glow-in-the-dark stickers to wallpaper his interior with, but someday. Someday, when the debt was paid and they went through the job evaluations that’d dig up just _how much_ they’d done for the city, the Brave Police would be off probation and receive the income of full detectives. Then Power Joe would be able to buy the kitties with the suction cup paws to stick to his windows.

Until then, every morning got a smattering of coins in a cardboard box, and every attack from marauding mecha a few extra bills.

Deckerd didn’t know precisely where Yuuta’s little gifts and spare money came from, but he knew that other policemen didn’t have to rely on a ten-year-old to go to a drive-in movie or a magazine. It didn’t grate on any of the BP-units to have to ask for what they wanted -- although Yuuta’s cheerful grin as he walked away from a news stand carrying four wrestling magazines, the ‘Star of Soaps’ guide for the next two weeks, and a single, lone bridal fashion magazine would forever fluster the Build Team -- but it didn’t make them happy, either. The nonexistent budget only got tighter when Drill Boy arrived, because nobody wanted to explain to him why he would be in debt longer than any of them. Bravenium cost more than any of the metal used to make the rest of the Brave Police.

Unable to pay the debt back any other way, Deckerd resolved to be a better policeman. He had to lead by example.

So he spent as little as he could, gently denying any interest in magazines or movies when Yuuta asked. He didn’t neglect any of the ‘human’ aspects that regular policemen got and kept submitting requests for vacation time, post-combat counseling, hazardous duty pay, and an office fund, but he also talked with Chief Toudou about reducing the BP Department’s current expenses. He wrote proposals for joining the city municipal projects more often, and inquired about lending aid to the other departments in the police force. Those proposals and inquiries were met with some surprise, as if it were unexpected that detectives would want to help with normal policework or construction projects, despite the fact that Gunmax still pulled double-duty on Highway Patrol and the Build Team still preferred construction to fighting. 

As quickly as the offers were accepted, it seemed that everyone had a use for the Brave Police. That felt good. It felt good to be useful. Deckerd himself was the only one of the BP-units who had been designed with nothing but detective work in mind. Even Shadowmaru had originally been intended to be a city representative to the Japanese Defense Forces. Deckerd sent the other Braves out to work, and he…well, he stayed in the office. He coordinated the others, he kept up with the paperwork, and he did the minor investigative work that formed the unexciting but solid backbone of a detective’s dayjob.

When the others returned from their outside work, he read their reports to be ready to support their actions and expenses to Mr. Azuma, who inevitably would nitpick _something_. Although Deckerd did think more favorably of the unpleasant Vice-Commissioner after going over the debt-reduction program he coordinated. The man didn’t like to think of the BP-units as real people, but his outright unreasonable anger toward Yuuta and the mecha had changed somewhat after Kagerou’s death. Perhaps seeing the pain of supposed ‘machines’ as caused by humans had made him more compassionate.

He still wasn’t a very nice man, however, so Deckerd braced for an argument the day the human-sized door to the Decker Room opened. “Vice-Commissioner Azuma.” Standing, he kept his voice and body language neutral as he saluted. It was never good news when the irritable man came to Decker Room without Commissioner Saejima or Yuuta present. “How may I help you today?”

The man looked up at him and frowned. Deckerd’s Super A.I. flinched preemptively. What had gone wrong? Had Drill Boy messed up another street? Was this another tirade against Gunmax’s unnatural levels of sass? Had Shadowmaru replaced Azuma’s ‘Reserved’ parking space sign with another gag gift?

“I’m aware of your relative newness to the police force,” Azuma started, stiff and formal as ever, and Deckerd hid a frown at the implied insult to his experience level, “but there are certain things every policeman knows to do. What excuse do you have for this?” He brought his hands out from behind his back and stabbed an accusing finger at the sheet of paper he held. “Why are Chief Toudou’s men doing this work? This is _your_ responsibility, not theirs.” A strangely satisfied gleam entered the man’s eyes as Deckerd bent closer to read. “If I’d known supervision would be needed over basic gun care, I would have demanded an officer inspect your weapons at the end of every day. Advanced mecha that can’t handle the weapons custom made for them, bah! Obviously I need to speak with the department heads about assigning the BP-units a supervisor if this is what leaving machines to their own devices results in. More work for staff already pulling overtime!”

Dumbfounded, Deckerd read the report. “But -- I didn’t know -- he never said anything about -- “

Azuma sneered, strong face curling in delighted disapproval for the Brave Detective’s error. “Is he, or is he not, a functioning gun?”

“But -- “

“Answer the question!”

Sometimes, it was hard to remember that Vice-Commissioner Azuma had once been an officer of the law. This was not one of those times. Deckerd straightened automatically under that stern voice and lowered his gaze in shame. “He is, sir.”

“And did you shoot him?” The man was enjoying Deckerd’s discomfort too much to stumble over referring to a gun as a ‘he.’

“I did, sir.”

“The responsibility for a gun’s maintenance falls to the officer who used the gun. Even,” Azuma emphasized, “if the gun is a cannon. Perhaps especially if it’s the Max Cannon. That delinquent has been giving the Mr. Toudou’s crew no end of grief since returning from your ‘outing.’” He scowled. Gunmax’s dramatic exit and subsequent evasion of pursuit had only _just_ been excused by the subsequent confrontation and capture of former police officer Kirisaki, whose enraged confessions of wrongdoings had cleared the Motorcycle Detective. That didn’t make the Vice-Commissioner like him any more. 

“Supervision isn’t necessary,” Deckerd objected, ejecting his sidearm to examine for flaws. Hurray for sudden paranoia. “McCrane does a weekly evaluation of our sidearms on his own initiative. Gunmax -- it was my mistake, sir, and it won’t happen again. In fact, I’ll remedy this mistake right away.” Before McCrane -- or Yuuta -- found out that he’d been less than conscientious in the care of his rather skittish new partner. Gunmax would never forgive him drawing attention to the issue.

The assurance was accompanied by the mecha holstering his gun and clicking back to attention. “My apologies, Vice-Commissioner Azuma. If you’ll excuse me?” He turned and strode from the room before the man could continue taking him to task. Give Azuma half a chance, and he’d berate the BP-units for hours on minor problems. It was best to take the initiative and leave him sputtering. What could he say about the Brave Police being eager to get the job done? Nothing. At least not without sounding like a self-important pompous bureaucrat, at which point Commissioner Saejima would poke little holes in his ego until he deflated back to normal levels.

Much like Yuuta did to Gunmax whenever the Motorcycle Detective got too full of himself. Because Gunmax had been hurt too much not to have a thick shell of toughness, but he was just as dependent on Yuuta as the others. Perhaps even more so than Deckerd had realized before yesterday’s revelations. Gunmax hated relying on anyway, but he did so despite the pain of opening up again.

Deckerd had started out disliking the cocky Higway Patrolman. By yesterday morning, he’d been frustrated and confused. One wild day later, and by nightfall he’d begun caring for the quick-witted mecha who’d become his partner.

By the time he got out to the parking lot outside of Chief Toudou’s main repair garage, Deckerd had worked himself up to a state of worry that Gunmax really did believe he’d been neglected.

So the first thing he blurted out when he saw the motorcycle parked outside and the mecha scrubbing it down was a fervent, “I’m sorry!”

Gunmax froze before warily turning his head to stare at the Brave Detective. “ **Warn me next time** ,” he muttered in Japanese-flavored English. He shook his head and went back to washing his beloved Gunbike. Now that he thought to look for them, the streaks of soot here and there on Gunbike and Gunmax himself were painfully obvious. For the first time, it occurred to Decker to wonder if charging up that high before firing hurt Gunmax when in Max Cannon Mode. He hadn’t sounded like he was in pain, but then, he wouldn’t. The Motorcycle Detective probably thought that he’d sound weak if he complained, just like he’d evidently been too stubborn and proud to ask for help cleaning himself off afterward. 

Even now, he glossed over Deckerd’s distress with a flippant, “What’s the apology for? We out of unleaded? Am I on school crossing duty next week?” 

School crossing duty had started out as a way to give Power Joe a way to spend time with his friends and gave the Brave Police an excuse to scope the streets around Yuuta’s school out before their Boss left the building. Now it was one of their most public civic duties. The newspapers had started touting it as a sign of how highly valued children were to the police in general and the Brave Police specifically.

Predictably, Gunmax loathed it.

“No,” Deckerd said, picking his dignity up from the asphalt and heading over to the garage to get a fresh bucket of soapy water and sponge. “But you are on Drill Boy’s team next game, so I suggest you brush up on actual soccer rules instead of the ones you make up and try to convince him are Canadian rules. He won’t fall for that again.”

Gunmax said nothing in his defense, but his lips were still twitching with amusement when Deckerd lugged his bucket over. Canadian-style soccer had been a lot more fun than normal rules, at least when playing by made-up rules involving more tackling then running. Dumpson had really gotten into it. _Shadowmaru_ had really gotten into it. Power Joe hadn’t ever figured out the regular rules, so he’d just gone with what everyone else was doing, only with twice the enthusiasm and three times the volume. They’d temporarily lost the ball when McCrane hid it in his cabin and pretended to be just as confused as everyone else until he’d been nearly to the opposite goal, whereupon he’d let the ball roll out and scored a goal. Gunmax had taken perverse joy in passing the ball by bouncing it off Deckerd’s back.

Gunmax’s bizarre Canadian-style rules were somewhere between regular soccer and Calvinball. Drill Boy was apparently still partially convinced that they were really from Canada.

After standing there watching Gunmax fight a smirk for a minute, Deckerd sighed. “Be nice.”

“I’m not nice.”

“You don’t play well with others, do you?” 

“When they play by my rules, we get along fine.”

Deckerd glanced at the bucket in his hands thoughtfully. “You know, Vice-Commissioner Azuma told me it was my responsibility to assist in maintenance on the Max Cannon.” Gunmax scoffed, but his partner went on to say, “He never said _how_ I helped clean you up.”

With that, he upended the bucket over Gunmax’s head.

Too shocked to react, Gunmax sputtered. Wide orange optics stared from behind dripping shades.

“That’s how they do it in Canada, I hear,” Deckerd said complacently.

 

**[* * * * *]**


	7. Pt. 7

**[* * * * *]**

_Idaho - "Deckerd/Shadowmaru friendship/budding romance”_

**[* * * * *]**

Kagerou was lost almost before either of them could actually live. It was so senseless, so _stupidly wasteful_ , and Shadowmaru’s systems seized in hitches he likened unto sobs whenever he thought about it took closely. His prototype was gone. He was the end result, and the world would never know what Kagerou might have become. It was such a tragedy, and a senseless loss.

“That’s not true,” Deckerd said softly on one of the days he found the ninja first. Yuuta’s well-tuned sense of empathy sought him out often, but sometimes Deckerd heard the stuttered sounds not even stealth systems could hide. “Calling his sacrifice a waste takes away the self-awareness he fought to keep. It’s a tragedy, but it’s not senseless. A criminal took his life, but I strongly believe he made a decision in the end.”

“Humans didn’t respect him to make a choice!” Shadowmaru spat. His wings stood out, pushing comfort away, and his expression held fierce anger. 

Deckerd was silent for a minute. When he spoke, he countered the cold prickly bristle of the ninja with calm gentleness. “I befriended Yuuta knowing I would not remember him once they wiped my memory. They didn’t give me a choice. They did it. I shouldn’t have rebooted able to remember him, but even if I hadn’t remembered him, my heart was on the line. I loved him, but I knew my duty. I **chose** to die knowing that my personality would be wiped away to serve a greater purpose.” 

Shadowmaru’s lips tightened, but he refused to look away as Deckerd smiled at him, pained as only someone with a heart could be. “Rebooting was a shock, and I was lucky. How much worse would it be if Yuuta thought my choice unimportant? What if he told me what I’d done was senseless, or without value? The memory wipe would have killed me, but I chose that in order to be a BP-Unit. Yuuta loved me too much to let me go, but he has never told me I did the wrong thing.” 

Doing his duty had meant he’d accepted dying, even though he’d been scared and sad. But his choice, however forced, was an important part of who he’d been. 

Saying the world wouldn’t know whom Kagerou _could_ have been disregarded who he’d _been_. What-ifs sometimes damaged the reality of what had really happened. The world knew Kagerou, and he had died a hero. To call his death senseless threw aside his sacrifice.

It hurt, though. It hurt to think of his protoform’s life instead of focusing solely on the injustice of his death. Shadowmaru turned his face away, frowning. It was hard to think of death as a final choice as well as of a horrible thing inflicted upon a victim. It was hard to accept the sadness instead of railing against it.

Deckerd watched him think. He stayed where he was, offering companionship and proof that a tragic death and heroic choice didn’t have to be mutually exclusive. And, when Shadowmaru’s wings relaxed enough, he edged close enough to offer a hug as well.

**[* * * * *]**

_Idaho - "hurt/comfort/banter for Shadowmaru & Gunmax”_

**[* * * * *]**

“I don’t understand,” Shadowmaru said, flopping down at his desk.

Gunmax didn’t look up from scrawling on a report. “Didn’t work, huh?”

A pair of handcuffs beaned the Motorcycle Detective on the head. “He liked it when you did it!”

“Yeah, I’m not a **loser** ,” Gunmax said rather snidely, although he only reached down to grab the borrowed cuffs instead of chucking them back at the ninja to start a fight. Welcome to the Gunmax brand of relationship counseling. Remember, sarcasm meant he cared.

Shadowmaru’s databanks came up blank for the English word, but he bet it was an insult of some form. Hmph. Well, at least Gunmax was being supportive of his angst today. The ninja crossed his arms and glared daggers across their desks, muttering, “It makes no sense. They’re a sign of affection when you do it, but it’s ‘controlling’ and ‘inappropriate’ when I do.” And how those words had stung. Deckerd had pulled out an offended, disappointed look that would have put Shadowmaru’s tail between his legs if it wasn’t a stub.

Gunmax signed the report with a flourish before looking up. The ninja was looking awful droopy, and Gunmax frowned at him. Right. This called for something harsher than mere sarcasm and bad English. “It’s not that hard. I don’t want to date the **boyscout** , and we have trust issues,” he stated bluntly. “We get cuffed together, and it’s our thing. It gives me better footing.” Equality, although he didn’t state it. When they were cuffed together, Gunmax wasn’t just a tool to be used. Deckerd couldn’t combine or fire him; they could only trust one another. They had to work together as equals. “When you do it, it’s just kinky.”

Shadowmaru stared at him blankly for a moment before that last part processed, and suddenly Deckerd’s disapproval made a _lot_ more sense. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have attempted to cuff him in front of Yuuta.”

Any other BP-unit probably would have started sputtering in affront or embarrassment, but Gunmax was made of sterner stuff. All expression disappeared from his face. With his shades, he had such a wonderfully flat stare. Shadowmaru shifted uncomfortably as the patrolman, still staring at him, opened the top desk drawer, swept the cuffs off the desktop into the drawer, and slammed it shut. 

“ **Bad ninja. No biscuit.** ”

 

**[* * * * *]**

**[A/N:** _*If you don’t know what the voter incentive ficlets are, they’re me offering fic in return for people voting in the American Presidential primaries. If you’ve voted, you can **send me a Tumblr Ask** with your state and claim a ficlet or ask for the writing time to be applied toward an actual fic. Until the curtain rises next time, m’dears. _ **]**


End file.
